Help with Teaching Project for "Nurse as Educator" Course

[Jocelwyn]

Hello fellow nurses/nursing students! I'm in the second semester of a distance learning, RN-to-BSN program. One of my courses, "Career Pathway Development" is basically a "nurse as educator" type course and requires a major project involving the development and administration of an educational project.

I am a new grad RN, with zero work experience, and I'm a full time student pursuing my BSN, so I have no current workplace either. The project has been progressing in steps, with the first one being to identify "two problems in your workplace (or community if no workplace) and describe the gap between what is expected, and the existing conditions."

My workplace being distressingly non-existent, I agonized over it for about a week and then whacked out two (probably lame) "issues" within my community--something along these lines"

1. The "Passive Patient Mentality" (my teaching project could focus on becoming a more effective healthcare consumer--ways to keep up with doctors' visit notes or immunization status, how to effectively prepare for healthcare visits, or how to find reputable information online about their health, illnesses, or medications)

2. Lack of Awareness about Lyme Disease (it's basically rampant in my area, but a lot of people could stand to learn about applying Deet, not walking in tall grass, tick checks, early signs and symptoms, etc.)

So here's where the problem comes in. As feedback, my professor said they were good topics, but to "be sure you have a consistent group to assess, teach and evaluate throughout the entire semester" and informed the class as a whole that our target population would "probably not be a patient population" since they would be too hard to have as a consistent group (i.e. find and follow the same people for the next few months).

The rest of the class is happily chugging along with great plans to educate other staff at their workplaces about preventing HAI's, etc. (obviously what the project was geared towards all along), seemingly oblivious to the fact that I'm caught in a catch 22 due to my lack of connections/workplace.

This week I'm supposed to assess my non-existent population using questionnaires that I'm supposed to develop, and then write a paper about my findings, how I performed the survey/research/assessment, and how I'm going to use the findings to develop and tailor my teaching plan for this population. And this paper is due in... 9 days.

I emailed my teacher about these concerns, but she doesn't have a great track record of getting back to me, or of being helpful.

To be honest, I'm feeling totally overwhelmed.

Any advice/help would be a life-saver!

Do you have ideas how I might salvage my topics and find a stable patient population whom I can not only "assess" ASAP but also find together at some community venue down the road where I can present an educational project of some type? And then be able to evaluate those same people afterwards?

Or do you think I need a totally different plan altogether?

What would you do?

Thanks so much for your help!!

[enuf_already]

Do you have any family in the area? Friends? Belong to a church? What about a senior citizen group (not nursing home, but active seniors)? Any community college students in your area who might be willing to help you out? Older scout groups (prime candidates for picking up ticks) might be interested in helping while working on a badge or project with you. Ticks make me think of hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen. Any of those type groups in your area that would be available for free help?

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Try the local Trout Unlimited, Duck Hunters Unlimited, and other sportsmen's clubs.

For Boy Scouts, call the local council office -- they are in the phone book-- and ask for contact information for Venturing Crews (these are co-ed, age 14-21) with a high-adventure/outdoors focus. (Not all Venturing units are outdoors-focused.) You might even jumpstart some kid's Eagle (Boy Scout, male venturers can continue to work on Eagle as Venturers) or Ranger (Venturers who are not co-registered in a Boy Scout troop, and all females) award with this sort of program.

There are equivalents in Girl Scouts (Gold and Silver Awards) -- call the local GSUSA office.

AWESOME!

For local college or university, call the Outing Club.

Since most of these groups are already very well-aware of tick prevention, you could reinforce it and add content on current research on diseases related to ticks and how to recognize early onset if tick prevention failed or exposure happened despite best efforts -- Lyme and RMSF are just the tip of the iceberg now. Seriously. You could make a great unit out of that.

[Jocelwyn]

Wow, you guys are awesome at brainstorming! I guess I have trouble thinking outside the box when panicked :/

I'm loving the scouts idea--thank you for the info on how to get in contact with the best groups. Looks like I've got a lot of phone calls in my future to see what I can rustle up in the shortest time possible.

Thanks again, so much!