by 5scnurse

Is there anyone doing the ECCO (Essentials of Cricital Care) program that is sponsered by the ACCN? My employer just offered it to me and I was wondering if anyone else is doing the program and what they think of it. So far, I am having lots of fun learning, but it is really hard. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Diane

Re: ECCO Program

Use it to your advantage. It is a good program and every student that the army puts through their ICU and ER schools has to take it. I took it many moons ago. The program's interface was horrible. I had a big pc monitor and the ECCO slide windows were very small thus making it difficult to look at the graphics. Hopefully that has changed.

Good luck.

Re: ECCO Program

Our ICU uses it for new orientees. It is a good course and I think the interface problems have been worked out. It definitely helps to have exposure to the material before seeing it for the first time. I beleive our orientation is 3-4 weeks with the ECCO course alone to make sure the new nurses have plenty of time to study the material.
If only the con ed hours would carry over to new licensure periods then you wouldn't have to worry about it for 8-10 years!!

Re: ECCO Program

Its okay. I really prefer face to face learning because you can be challenged in a class room. Its a lot of info. I printed off all the notebooks it comes with. Good info, just a lot to digest. Im a new grad in CCU, its relating the info once its learned that really helps.

Re: ECCO Program

Our hospital uses this for nurses entering critical care areas ... it is a good review, but personally I prefer a lecture style of teaching.

Re: ECCO Program

I am doing ECCO, but I have had a ton of problems with the website. Half the time it doesn't save my answers and loses my scores. We aren't allowed to clock education hours to do it at home, and when I try to do it at work something always happens... For example, say I need to do patient care and I go do something, when I come back to the ECCO site, it has "timed out" and lost my answers.

I think that the information it has is very useful, but it's just not user friendly at this point in time. It really makes me angry at times, because we are supposed to have certain modules completed by specific dates, but it's nearly impossible, especially when the site so frequently loses my data. This isn't a computer specific or user problem either, as my friends have the same problems as I do whether we are doing it at home on our computers or at work.

Re: ECCO Program

A hospital in my area wants all it's critical care RN's to take ECCO. Yes, even the gals that were nursing in ICU before I was born. This is gonna be interesting.

Re: ECCO Program

Everyone going into critical care at my hospital has to take it..... I will be starting in two weeks so I can't say how I personally like it yet, but as a new nurse I am thankful for a structured class such as this to have some info going into my new position, rather than just being thrown into it; it makes me feel a little safer.

Re: ECCO Program

I will be starting ECCO in a few weeks and I haven't really heard much about it from anyone I work with yet but what do you get when you finish it? Do you get some sort of certification as a critical care RN or is it a certificate of completion or is it just that you now have added knowledge that not everyone gets??
thanks!

Re: ECCO Program

Ok well I can answer that question and put in my two cents! You don't really get a certificate of completion, but you do get about 60+ CEUs from it, not that you'll need those yet if your a new grad, but you can print the nifty completion things and file them away

So here's my take on ECCO, having just completed it yesterday. We did the class at our own pace in the hospital's computer lab for 8 hour days, 3-5 days a week (our manager doesn't want us doing direct patient care until this class is complete). The material itself is great; good A&P review, great patho review, and it goes over the medical and nursing management of lots of diseases. Here are my few complaints:

If you have a bit of knowledge going into this, you may be tempted to answer "real world" answers on the test. A lot of the test questions have more than one right answer and no, this isn't like NCLEX where you can figure out the BEST answer. This will be 2 completely equally correct answers and this happened to me on several tests. I even had a few tests questions where it very specifically said one thing in my notes and something completely wrong on the test was supposed to be the right answer. It wasn't just me that noticed it, everyone in my class noticed it but we didn't really complain to the teacher since the tests were open book and we were all passing; its just really irritating, lol.

Anyway, I did learn a lot, my only real complaint stems from the tests. Other than that, it is a good class and worth it!