microteaching on temporary pacemaker

What's microteaching?

Were you asked to identify where the knowledge gaps were and bridge them?

I work in an area with extensive use of temporary pacemakers and I think it varies from facility to facility how much nurses know about them. Some hospitals have better education programs to start with so nurses know what they need to know, other places not so much.

I would strongly suggest asking the course requestor to answer a few questions before beginning so you can clarify and make sure you are creating what they actually want. Otherwise, you could put a ton of effort into something only to find out it is not what they are expecting. For instance, what in the heck is "micro teaching"? Does that mean a very short event? if so, how short? You will also need to know -

+ What type of delivery method do you want? Face-to-face? Printed job aid? Self study (written, online, CD)

+ Who is the audience? What is their baseline knowledge of the subject?

+ What do you expect to accomplish with the program? - avoid formal inservice? use for refresher? use for quick, just-in-time training?

+ What are the learner objectives? Understand pathophysiology? Be able to detect & correct problems with settings? Respond appropriately to variations in sensitivity? etc?

Based on the answers you get, you will have a much better idea of the content you need to include and how you should assess/measure outcomes. FYI, most pacemaker manufacturers have wonderful educational materials that you can adapt for your use.

I'm not sure there is any short and quick way to teach temporary pacemakers, other than to say "If they need to be paced then turn it on / hit the emergency button". Other than that it's hard to manage any portion of maintaining an external pacemaker without understanding the pacing settings (VVI, DDD, etc) and paramaters (sensing, capture, PVARP, etc) since it's probably not a good idea to be making adjustments to those without understanding how they work.