moodwaffle

I've been working on a video skills fair for our NACs (for a 200 bed hospital). It's basically a powerpoint with professional quality audio dubbing put into DVD format, 35 minutes long. The goal of the project was to create a generally informative, portable, and fun skills fair. New orientees will watch the video, and skills fair make-ups will be a breeze. And unless every policy in the book changes in the next couple of years... then the video skills fair can be used over again, thus saving time. Has anyone ever tried this before?

Thanks for the replies. How many hours a week do your educators work? JJGRN's description sounds pretty much was we do, but 10 hours a week.

the 220 bed community hospital that I work for has "Nurse Educators" for each department (for the last 4 years or so). These educators, which I am new to, are not all BSN, none have Masters. Our roles are not well defined. Some of us have more autonomy than others, some pick up assistant-manager type responsibilities. Basically, I'm pretty sure I'm responsible for: 1. Orientation paperwork and process. 2. Yearly competencies. 3. Keeping education files up to par. My goal is get a clearly defined role, have it apply to all educators. For example, some educators do not plan the yearly RN skills fair we have. The assistant-managers do. We all have to work together on the skills fair, but the heirchary inserts itself and effectiveness and teamwork decreases--- Because MY role is not clearly defined and I'm guessing! Anyways, I'm writing up a role proposal and going to present it to the head honcho of education. It'd be great to know how other hospitals use educators or people similar to this position.

I'm a graduate of Northwest University (NW)and thought I'd post a thread on my experience for perspective students. NW offers a BSN degree (two Christian bible classes are required, which can be taken in the summer in a 13 week concentrated course). NW is in Kirkland, WA, which is about 15-25 minutes from Seattle. First, Northwest is a Christian university-- they have a strict set of rules such as no alcohol/drugs, no extra-marital coital activities, no abortions, homosexuality etc. Basically, the school is run with Judeo-Christian values and they want students to be committed to these values. So if you're not of that moral leaning, NW may not be for you. They require students to attend chapel three times week, prayer is commonly used to start classes, and Christian spirituality is integrated into all classes. The nursing program is pretty decent, fully accredited. My class of 2007 graduated 86% NCLEX first try. Cost is about 26-28K a year. The program was founded by a medical missionary to India (Mark and Hulda Buntain), and part of the vision of the nursing school is to train Christian nurses to work their faith into their practice. Part of the curriculum is to train nurses how to provide medical care in third world settings, which was great! I spent 30 days in Calcutta, India, running around in slums, red-light districts, and Indian hospitals as part of a clinical experience (a lot of community health, infection control, hospice, and I spent a week in the ER and ICU). The trip is required, and is considered a clinical. Locations include India, Africa, Alaska, American Native Americans (Oregon, and WA), Mexico, Madagascar, Shri Lanka, Taiwan. The trip is chaperoned by staff, the same moral standards apply, and there's homework you'll be doing in your jet-lagged-exhausted state of mind. The trip was amazing for me. I still call and talk to some of my nursing professors. The professors utterly and completely want you to succeed and do everything they can to help. All but two professors had their doctorates, and the Dean is a really nice dude with an amazing academic record. Class sizes are small (no more than 30), and there was a real sense of family in my cohort. In 2008, NW built a whole new science building with cadaver labs and a big skills lab. I've seen the new building, and I'm real jealous is wasn't built in time for my class. Overall, the nursing school was great, I learned a lot, succeeded at the NCLEX, and look forward to more medical trips to India (I made some great contacts over there). I hope this review as helpful.

Dude, No sexism where I'm at (Washington State). If anything, the foreign female docs get all nervous around us male nurses for some reason, but other than that... if you can put up with drama and gossip all day long, welcome to nursing!

We have a "Core Coordinator" (CC), which is the same thing as a charge nurse so I'm told. Our med-surg/onc floor is usually staffed 5/4 (34 beds). On weekdays 7 to 3, we staff a core-coordinator, who does not take patients. The CC primary roles: floor audits (restraint compliance if we have them, and DOH, infection control monitoring), staffing, codes/rapid responses, assisting swamped nurses, ensure nurses get breaks, facilitating discharges, and chemo checks. Secondary roles: admits (we usually have a house admit nurse), doing interventions for nurses (NG tubs, catheters etc), passing meds, taking a patient, answering overtime call lights, assist in discharge planning with the social workers. I CC 3 days a week and stay pretty busy. Our floor went to having a CC after coordinators such as myself said we couldn't take 5-6 patients AND coordinate a 34 bed unit.

A "two-unit floor": med-surg on one side 19 beds, and oncology on the other with 15 beds (it's a hallway floor layout, not podded) Currently our report is as follows: 1: Look at the staffing board to see what side of the floor you'r assigned. The breakroom has a moveable partition and the med-surg group is on one side, the oncology on the other. (Usually staffed 3/3 on med-surg and 2/2 on onc). 2: the nurses and CNAs listen to report on ALL the patients, and then divide up the floor. Sometimes, report takes 45 minutes. The reasoning for this type of report: having all the nurses get report on everyone on the floor allows for improved teamwork. Our staff "mileau" is very teamwork oriented, and we watch each others back and help each other a lot, though you're ultimately responsible for your group. I find the most important thing I need to know about other people's patient's is their code status and contact precautions-- everything else can change throughout the day and it's best to look at the chart. With that reasoning, administration wants to move to a patient assignment type of report, and another coordinator and myself have been assigned to change the way the floor has done report for the past several millenia. Our plan: 1: assign patient groups to RNs and CNAs 2: have RN and CNA teams listen to report on their patients, and then start the day. When another person is getting report, the RN is to start looking up labs, meds etc on their patients. Our problems: 1: NOC RNs giving report will have to split up their report (2 NOC RNs passing on report to 3 dayshift RNs). 2: The oncology side is hectic, and involves much more skilled chemo knowledge, and most chemo nurses such as myself prefer to hear report on everybody. I want to get a feel of what other hospitals and units similar to ours do. Any suggestions? Personally, if people didn't use report of personal decompression time and just gave the facts, report time would be a lot quicker. On the other hand, I'd like to know my patient group ahead of time, so I pay more attention during report on my patients.