puggymae

I have been teaching on-line for quite a while now. It is more labor intensive initially than just lecturing in the classroom. Once you get everything lined out and set up it makes your life a lot easier. Our whole program went on-line excluding lab and clinical. The students either love it or hate it.

The general rule at our school is two questions per hour of lecture. You are allowed to make more if you think the content lends to more, but all of the questions have to be NCLEX style questions.

How have you done skills lab in the past? Or is this a completely new program?

When my students go to the OR I arraign to have them meet a patient in registration. The student then follows the patient to the holding room, to the OR suite, recovery and then to the floor (or to the car). You can do the same thing with the ED - the student could either start in triage or they could actually go with the rescue squad (if that is allowed). Have them do a power-point or a tri-fold presentation board depicting their experience or maybe just a part they loved or hated. They could determine a knowledge deficit that the patient had during the experience and make a short 3-5 minute video doing that teaching. Do not limit them to "papers." I know that they do not want to write them and that you do not particularly want to grade them!

I forgot - students work up to the expectation that you have for them. If you only expect them to sit there and listen, then that is all they will do.

I had to make small changes over the course of time to get away from lecturing. One of the first things I did was make my course "web-enhanced." I posted all of my lecture notes, outlines, power points on-line. That way the students had the "lecture material" and did not have to try to take notes. I could do demonstrations, show films, take them on field trips without losing "lecture time. Then I started adding small student projects. My pharmacology course made drug commercials. I picked the group members, they drew a drug out of a hat, made the commercial, and I uploaded it to the web-site. I gave them objectives, and told them that the commercial had to be suitable to show to a Sunday school class full of grandma's! Some of the commercials were so funny that we were holding our sides, crying with laughter while we watched them. Another small project was having each student pick three topics and make a trifold presentation board about each topic. The topics were picked the first day of class, and the due dates were assigned. I did not lecture on these topics. The students were told what content needed to be covered and told that their peers were counting on them to cover it. Most of them were awesome, of course there are always a few students who try to get away by doing the least amount of work possible. I have found them to be the exception rather than the rule. Now in all of my courses the students teach 98% of the content. They are responsible for generating information sheets (takes the place of lecture notes), power points, giving me questions to add to my ever growing test bank of questions, and teaching the information either through games, demonstrations, videos that they make, role playing - you name it. In the beginning the students were reluctant to change from lecture to alternative methods. Now everyone has heard what to expect in my classroom and they rarely complain (because it doesn't do any good ). Let me know if you want more ideas!

At our school you cannot go to clinical if you have any limitations. A cast would certainly be a limitation. If it extends down onto the hand - how would you wash your hands. And you need two hands to do almost any procedure. Just remember that you are not failing out - it is in your best interest, as well as the patients, and school. Good luck!

Why aren't you allowed to take your lunch to clinical? That is stupid on the school's part. You could take prepacked peanut butter crackers or cheese crackers in your clipboard. Or a handful of nuts and raisins in a zip loc baggie.

It would be great if we could all visit other faculty members to get ideas for our clinicals and classrooms! I rarely "lecture" in the classroom - students are in charge of presentations or demonstrations almost every class period - I only facilitate the class. It took me three years to transition to that point (after 13 years of lecturing every class period). Students usually love it or hate it. But it must work because we have had 100% NCLEX for the past 5 semesters. Anyone who would like to throw around alternative teaching ideas feel free to contact me.

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.

I always recommend this site to my students. I do not make it a requirement that they join but I include it on my course Syllabus as a valuable resource. I have gotten great feedback from those who do use the site. Reading posts in the student nurses forum makes them realize that our school is and school policy is very much like all the other schools. It encourages them that their situation is not unique and that they can vent to people who really do understand what they are going through. Another aspect they really appreciate is the fact that they can ask so many people for assistance for such a variety of topics. I get a lot of ideas off of the student forums to help my students in clinical and class.

I always tell students: When you aren't working under my license you can do things however you want to - until then you will do it the way we teach it in the program. At the clinical site if they see some travesty occur and call me on it I always tell them: I am your boss, not theirs. If their boss doesn't care if they give unsafe, sloppy care that is betweem them.

It is illegal to disclose information such as who is passing/failing to other people (even a students parent).

The hospital should have a patient care representative (or patient ombudsman). The family could contact him/her and voice their concern and what they want done. The patient rep can set up a meeting between social services, the doctors, the nurses, the family, and patient to discuss this situation. Your husband is doing a good thing being an advocate for this patient. Even if there is nothing else that can be done for her she deserves to be told that up front.

At our school we do not take any student who has a lifting restriction as a lot of lifting goes on in the clinical area. Once we had a student who lied about having a restriction - and when it came out that person was dismissed from the program. I do not want to discourage you - but I want you to know that having a back injury my impede your education. Good Luck!