Has anyone ever considered starting "Nursing Skills Centers" where current and ...

Published Feb 8, 2004

784 Posts

prospective nurses could go to practice, acquire, and improve their nursing skills in a low pressure environment? You could do everything from getting training for your ACLS certification, or CC RN to practicing "checkoff skills" if you were going to be starting clinicals in a year or so in nursing school. In addition, there would be libraries of nursing journals, and discussion groups where all sorts of subjects were hashed over, and the latest techniques demonstrated and evaluated. Heck, we pay $60.00 a month to the YMCA, I would gladly shell out at least that much for something that might facilitate my success in nursing.

I tried at school to find a "tutor" who would help me do IV starts and blood draws BEFORE I had to face it in clinicals, and haven't been able to find any takers (despite advertising for $20.00 per hour). At such a facility as I am proposing members (who might include those just working on their nursing pre-requisite classes) could have these skills half mastered going INTO clinicals. Imagine, having practiced twenty head to toe accessments before having to do it "for the money" in nursing school clinicals. It would take SOME of the stress out of school. Those who already worked in a hospital could work on advanced, long codes for an ACLS examination, without worrying about missing a pulse and looking stupid in front of co-workers (granted modern ACLS certification involves more computer based testing these days, but this would be a way of capturing the BEST of the good old days). Given the demand for nurses these days such a facility could probably garner funding from federal and state government (in addition to member use fee's where appropriate).