Nurse and Patient Education

[henry-106]

Ok. So this quarter one of the focuses in my Fundamentals class, is we have to do a presentation on nurse and patient education.

My group thought of this topic: Long QT Syndrome. In small amount of words, its basically a long interval between the Q T on EKG. We were going to focus on pediatric patients. Well my prof. e-mails us about our topic, because he thinks its obscure. (which he is fairly rude anyways). He says we shouldn't do it, but he will approve it, and in order for us to get the full grade, it better be a heck of a presentation. (and thats substituting some of his words).

So my question. Should we go ahead and do that topic? I thought of another topic while doing some reasearch and that is, Acupuncture and dealing with hypertension.

Part of me says, to go ahead with our original subject, and prove the instructor wrong. But if he already has the wrong impression even before we have done the presentation, is it worth is and paying for it going our way with a grade thats not the best?

Your thoughts? And if you have any other suggestions for the topic.

Thanks! :)

[babynursewannab]

Long QT syndrome is something that can put a person at risk of sudden death...you probably know that. Part of the problem I think your instructor is addressing is the fact that the condition itself is obscure and presenting on it in terms of nursing may be well beyond the scope of your class. An enormous part of this condition is medical-based. Education about lifestyle and choices fall into the scope of nursing. Perhaps if you narrowed it down to education or some other sub-set of the the topic-at-large.

Aside from that. It is never professional for instructors to be rude or give the impression of rudeness to their students. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. That said, maybe you should consider a different topic. Most of us have had to deal with biased instructors and have learned over time to pretty much give them what they want so we can get out into the world and truly learn the way things are done. One of my mottos that has gotten me through nursing school is: "Tell 'em what they want to hear."

Good luck.

[henry-106]

Alyssa,

I agree. After thinking through it. I realized that yeah we could probably do our presentation on Long QT Syndrome, but I think it would take alot of work. There is more research and info on QT then what I though there would be. But, after talking to my group and talking to the instructor, we may decide on another topic. Personally, I think from other things that the instructor said, he will probably expect us to present a pretty good presentation. And maybe if we could choose something that still isn't so popular, and do a good job- we will get the grade we want. In consideration this presentation is worth 20% of our grade. And as for the instructor, there have been many other complaints about him. Last quarter I had no issue with him. I thought he was a smart, and knew alot about nursing although he has just been a nurse for 10 years. This quarter though, a little different story. But, I agree with you in giving them what they want to hear. I was a little heated by his reaction at first. But you learn to blow that off- and grin and bear.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks for your opinion.

[rn undisclosed name]

Beth

I don't have any suggestions for any other topics. But, maybe your instructor is trying to steer you toward something else just because he thinks you'll have a difficult time with it. If you want to do it, ask him what his rationale is. They're always asking us for ours so he should've said something besides it being obscure. Be specific.

But, really, if an instructor tells me not to do something I would go with what they say just cause they have more experience under their belt than we do. I am kind of failing in seeing how you are going to do patient and nurse education with Long QT syndrome. I would think something more along the lines of an MI would be a heck of a lot easier to do.

[henry-106]

Kellykul~

We did talk to the instructor. And he said that the topic is approved if we want to do it. But he does know that it will be tough. Of course, being competitive personality, I wanted to prove that I could do it. Which that kinda of attitude I have to calm myself down all the time.

As for a topic, we are thinking about: Prevention of Melanoma, Breat feeding, or possibly Asthma. My group is going to be doing some research on all these and Long QT Syndrome, and then we are going to discuss what we want to do. We may choose an easier topic- because this quarter is picking up fast.

And yes I do agree that my instructor does know alot more then me- and I respect him for that. But there are some other issues that I don't respect him for. But I think those are more personal. So you just keep it to yourself, and learn what you can from him. :)

Thanks for your input though. I have thinking about this situation alot, and my thoughts were going towards what you said.

Have a good weekend.:)

[RedSox33RN]

Just a suggestion, as I'm in Fundamentals now also, and also doing a paper, but what I think they may be looking for is something relating to Nursing Diagnosis and Prevention? All of us have to do papers on some aspect of Community Resources for nursing. I'm doing mine on Adult Day Care facilities, and how they are utilized by patients. Others are doing ones like Hospice care, in-home IV therapy and dialysis, industrial nursing, etc.

Your topic does sound more like an advanced type of paper - one you may want to do next year or so. Did they give you any suggestions on paper topics? We could come up with our own, but did so with our clinical instructor in post-conference one day, after going over what types of care a client may need after being d/c'd. That's how we were able to come up with ours.

I don't want to discourage you from doing such an important topic, but it does seem advanced for a beginning nursing student. :)

[henry-106]

Hey Whitney.

Well, its one of those ever so fun nursing assignments, where they don't make things really black and white. D/t the fact that they want you to expand on your "critical thinking" skills. Yeah. Which I think is cool and all that. Basically, what I know we need: we need to think of a targeted patients, need to steer away from a "staff in service" type format, and of course, needs to be pertaining to "Teaching and Learning" aspect of nursing. They really didn't give us any examples. But from previous classes: other students have done things from Diabetes (which is way over used in the class as an example), Bathing a baby, to self breast examination,etc. Make any sense? Most of my groupees want to do the "Breast feeding" which I guess that will be fine. I dunno. You know when you think about something so much, or have your mind in the subject so much- that you need to pull away for awhile and relax, then go back and evaluate. Well, I reached that point 10min ago.

I have definatly zeroed out the Long QT Syndrome topic. So thats good.

Thanks,Whiteney for your input. Any bit helps. Ok. I gotta go rest my eyes from this computer screen.