Post clincal conference topic ideas

dorimar, BSN, RN · Feb 3, 2009

Wow, I would think case studies would make the theory more applicable and real for students. I am hoping to start teaching soon. I have worked critical care for over 20 years and just got my Masters, have precepted often, but never taugth formally. One of the main reasons I wanted to go into teaching is because of what real experiences taught me. I have learned from my mistakes adn the mistakes of others, and have alwyas taught this to my orientees, and I know it has benefited them. I don't know what's involved in post-conferences these days (how much time in clinical and how much time in post conference?). But what I would like to do is pick one of the students patients and discuss the nursing care, nursing process, and critical thinking that did, or should have, or chould have happened. For instance... A fresh post-op patient with low cvp and low urine output (maybe the bp wasn't even low or the HR not tachy yet). Fluids would be teh first choice. If the HR does become tachy, but maybe the BP still hasn't dropped--we are again calling the doc. Still tachy, still low CVP, still low u/o, but ok bp, perhaps we are checking an H&H, etc. adn you could give your real life experiences (for example, the last time this happened to me, patient had a ruputred spleen s/p whipple, adn I was calling and acting long before the BP dropped. By the time his BP dropped, it dropped fast adn drastic, adn I had blood up on th floor that I was dumping in him adn the OR crew lined up while trying to wake the surgeion for the 8th time that night--and PATIENT and doc thanked me for saving his life). These are real life scenarios that show the impact our care (or lack ther of) can have on patient outcomes. I think post conference should be teh time to apply the theory to practice adn think thi application through. Case studies are agreat way to do this and do not have to be dry.

litlrooh · Feb 21, 2010

I have had the exact same experience. I work in the ED, and the ICU. And in both areas, the instructors are not there at all. The students are left to fend for themselves, assigned to an RN. Its a shadow experience but with skills thrown in for good measure. So I try to find things that they haven't done yet, or not enough of (like starting IV's, drawing blood, and inserting foleys, IM injections etc) so that they can at least get some practice. I also go over how I organize my day in the ER (kind of an oxymoron, but ve have vays.)

litlrooh · Feb 21, 2010

In the school that I teach for, I am faculty for the evening program. The students do not arrive to clinical until 4pm because they are older students with families and jobs many times. My advice to them was to go through the chart, and I gave them a strategy for gathering information quickly...say, within a half hour. Then I told them to check in with the RN to make sure there wasn't anything special that they needed to know, like new orders, change in condition, etc. I also tell my students that even if VS have been done at 4pm, they are to do their own at 5pm as part of their assessments.

I suppose it depends on the school, but yes, we know all about the patient before we arrive, and then sit in on report. Then, we tell the RN what responsibilities we will be handling, and what is beyond our scope of practice. I always try to tell the RN to let me know if they have other patients that need wound care, NG Tubes or Foleys put in so I can get the practice. Once in a while, someone takes me up on it. :)
Perhaps a good use of post conference time might be to give the students an idea of how things normally work and how the students might make the best of their clinical assignments. I know I had to pretty much figure this out on my own by trial and error. The first semester, I am pretty sure the RNs were annoyed by us, but we had no idea what was expected of us. It would have been great if an RN could have spared 5 minutes or so during our post-clinicals to let us know how we could be helpful, what they expected of us, and how we could more rapidly gain their confidence .

litlrooh · Feb 21, 2010

I love your idea, but I don't think they would work for us. The students already have so much paperwork related to clinical, and only 5 hours to get their patient care AND all the info they need for their papers. And some of the papers are quite extensive. To add more to that plus their theory work seems like asking too much. I have warned my students I'm very heavy on pathophysiology. I don't just want to know what and how, I want to know WHY. Last time I taught, it was senior level students. This year its 3rd semester students (part time evening is each usual semester divided in half and stretched over a whole semester). So, I'm actually a 2nd semester out of 4, instructor. Anyway, I decided I'm going to use post conferences to emphasize pathophysiology, and their med cards. I may also use an idea that someone else gave me:

Assign 3 students, each to their own "abdominal pain" pt. The students are not to care for the pts but to come up with all of the pathophysiology of their individual pt. Then at post conference, present the similarities and differences between the 3 pts, and the why behind those sims and diffs.

I assign the students (in groups of two or three) to do a post conference program. It is amazing at the things they come up with.
I teach OB so some of the things that my students have done include word searchs on vocabulary words (they gave the definition, students had to find the word in the puzzle), they have made "training" videos about procedures/medications and showed it during post conference (complete with a pre/post test. They have done poster presentations, skits, made commercials - even staged a breech delivery - the list goes on and on.
I let them pick their own topics, have them run it by me and turn them loose. They try to out do each other and the results are always impressive.
To make sure everyone in the group participates I let the group members assign a participation grade to the other group members. They have to justify why they gave that grade (they only came to one meeting or they obtained all the articles and copied them for everyone).
It takes the pressure off of me always having to think up something for post conference, and the presentations are always so creative. I would have to work for 2 years to get that many "cool" presentations together.

HottyToddyRebels · Feb 24, 2010

This is my first semester teaching full time. I have taught adjunct for the last two years and we have had a pretty successful post conference format. I have read several students post on this forum saying they did not like learning more in post conference. I respectfully disagree, I think that the end of the day is a perfect time to "shine" and show your students how much they really do know. Throughout the day, I assign each student a small topic to talk about in post conference. It is normally something easy that they did not understand earlier in the day (i.e. a student not understanding a pertinent medication). We have 15 weeks of clinical and we rotated the following five topics every three weeks to make sure the students understood them: RAAS, ABG's, cranial nerves, CHF, and asthma. We go pretty in depth with each topic. For instance, we make sure that the students understand the pathophysiology of CHF, the 4 most common pharm classifications used in treatment of CHF, all of the drugs that effect the RAAS and specifically how they work, and side effects. All of my students understand Lisinopril's mechanism of action, side effects, contraindications, labs to monitor, and nursing considerations. They also know why the chronic cough and angioedema happens and how to correct each of them. Some of our instructors say we are too tough on our students but they appreciate it once they graduate and can explain these concepts to all of the other students who graduate from different schools. Since we rotate these topics, by the time the third rotation comes around all of the students are very grounded in each of these concepts.