Incorporating ECCO

We incoorperated ECCO into out CC orientation. We broke it down into 18 weeks, allowing the orientees to do 4 hours a week of ECCO either from work or at home, which they should have no trouble completing in the time aloted.

I can tell you how not to do this. When I took ECCO, we were required to take it online in our own spare time. We were not paid to take it, so most of us tried to take it at work as opposed to at home on our days off. Unfortunately, the website timed out rather quickly, had a lot of bugs, and frequently lost our answers. God forbid we would have to get up to take care of our patients... it would lose all the info on the module . This resulted in having to retake the sectional tests several times.

Thankfully, during part of the time I was taking ECCO, I had ankle surgery. Since I was essentially getting paid to sit around at home, I did finish most of my modules during the recovery period. However, some of my co-workers didn't even finish the program at all because they got too frustrated with the website's poor performance and many couldn't even access the content at home.

I don't know if AACN's online program is better now, but I was having these problems less than a year ago. I think combined classroom work with the online modules would be the best option, and the nurses should be given adequate time to work on them. Essentially, it is practically impossible to finish the online tests at work if one is expected to do them during regular work hours. I had no problem obtaining the information and going over it during work, but the tests are time sensitive, so it's impractical to take them if you have a patient assignment.

ECCO was a PITA and a waste of time and money. I feel like the educators can develop a thorough and indepth critical care course that caters to various learning styles. I feel that tends to be more effective than sitting in front of a computer for days upon end clicking through the powerpoint-esque ECCO.

I completed the ECCO program. We were to complete it at home. We did get paid for it, although we would not get paid overtime for it. We just had to turn our CEUs in from that particular section, and got paid however many hours were on the CEUs. At times it was overwhelming because it is a lot of information, but I'm really glad I did it.