Journal Club or M&M's for NP's?

[TX RN]

Anyone out there part of a Journal Club or M&M group?

I'm hoping to piece together information on the best way to approach implementing one (or both) for the mid-levels in my practice group. I work in a primary care group, with some facility rounds and plenty of triage work. There's only 3 mid-levels in the area but work at 3 different sites.

Looking for information on the following:

1. How were the meetings structured? Frequency of meetings (monthly, every other month), on site or web based?

2. What journal did you select and how did you select topics, articles and how was the rotation?

3. Do you feel that diagnosing and treatment skills improved because of it?

4. Any other information you think I should know.....

[CRF250Xpert]

we don't round, but Ihave been trying to get an M&M going since I got here. We would all benefit from presenting difficult cases and good catches from subtle clues. It helps the inner sleuth in all of us to talk about it.

[BCgradnurse, MSN, RN, NP]

We're just starting to do rounds at my practice (community health center). We're going to try and do it monthly.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

One thing CMS did right - at chronic dialysis units, we do have a quality meeting once/month and we do discuss M&M.

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

I'm part of a group of 12 ICU NP's working for a critical care service at a teaching hospital that is part of a medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy school of a university. We have our Critical Care M&M each month as part of the Division of Critical Care Medicine and Anesthesiology. These meetings are fellow-driven in the sense that the fellows put the meeting together but everyone including the NP's have input on which cases should be discussed. Interestingly, because we are an academic medical center, we also have organ/tissue samples from mortality cases whose families agreed for an autopsy and one of the attending pathologists demonstrates or explains the pathologic findings. It is very eye opening to say the least. It does help improve practice by discussing with everyone (attendings, fellows, residents, NP's) how things could have been improved. It is an internal audit and is not punitive. The residents and fellows have other educational activities including a journal club which we don't typically participate in. The NP's, however, have a monthy NP meeting and we incorporate a journal club during that meeting. Each NP takes turns heading the journal club each month. Because we're all working in the ICU, we limit articles to those that pertain to critical care.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Juan - I wanna come work with you!!

[TX RN]

Yep, JDLC, that sounds like a great gig.

Either that or you're a helluva salesman.

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Yep, JDLC, that sounds like a great gig.

Either that or you're a helluva salesman.

To be honest, I don't find it unusual that we have all these where I work. Our hospital has been on the US News Honor Roll rankings for 10 years in a row. I previously worked in critical care at another lesser known teaching hospital in another state. We also had monthly M&M's but becaue it's a Surgical Service (Cardiothoracic Surgery ICU), the Cardiothoracic Surgeons, the Anesthesiologists, and the Surgical Intensivists take the opportunity to point fingers at each other when figuring out what went wrong. The M&M sessions weren't as productive as where I am now. Plus, we didn't have the anatomic pathology organs and tissues to look at.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

When I worked at the "big teaching hospital in central IL" which shall remain nameless, it was wonderful - the M&M rounds were very productive.

In the private practice where I work now, we (the mid-levels: PAs/APNs) are part of the employee sector and if they do have M&M rounds I've never been invited - lol.

However, our docs are very cognizant of continuing to teach us and often point out a good article to review.