Topcat13

I support education efforts in over 70 hospitals all of which have on-line education opportunities. I see this an effective way to provide coginitive and theoretical education in light of the current unit or nursing floor environment. There still has to be classroom events to support the theory through practice. Practice and repetition with an education foundation leads to competence. Education is truly a value statement in any industry. How many resources are thrown at it determines where it ranks in the food chain within a given company or hospital. Another telling sign of education value is seen by the degree of involvement in strategic decisions. I have pushed the leadership enough to be at the table whenever any strategic efforts might include education. The vulnerability for all educators and education opportunities comes most apparent when there are economic shortfalls and RIFs. To better insulate my position in the hospital and to show value I provide how education has contributed to the the strategic goals of the hospital (increased patient quality, saved money, reduced turnover, etc.) That means doing our job differently and figuring out how to demonstrate value in your given environment...to be valuable one has to show value to key stakeholders, which may go beyond your DON.

There are several computer based programs available for education tracking. My vision of a one stop education electronic resource management system was realized through the IS department at the hospital I worked at. If you have a savvy IS group, then they could write code around an Access database that allows electronic registration, record keeping and reports. The IS team I worked with created a badge scan integration so that classroom activity attendance could be entered into the electronic database by simply swiping your badge into a card reader and downloading that information into the system by pressing a button...and presto, all attendance was recorded on their individual transcripts. I was able to run department reports and course reports. I am now with a hospital system that has a learning management system (LMS) that is a dream for providing on-line education and record keeping...it requires commitment and money to launch it, it requires leadership and dedicated resources to support it, and requires a culture that embraces an electronic environment. Our journey and success is a book worth writing. If money, commitment, etc. are unavailable for a LMS, then if you are comfortable using Microsoft Excel I suggest it as an alternative to the manual methods that most of us grew up with and still use. Moving things to electronic formats always takes time to set it up. But once you have your templates developed then you'll save loads of time and be more effective and efficient when data was needed or requested. Plus, you'll be able to get rid of some file cabinets in your office. One word to the wise...from experience...if you use computers to maintain data, be sure to save your data frequently to an external source (external hard drive, network server, CDs) rather than just to your computer hard drive.

Other things that staff educators may be involved in on any given day includes: Managing the preceptor system; Validating competencies; Being the gate keeper for nursing policy and procedures; Managing American Heart Association training; and there is always the chance that you could be pulled into staffing when a shortage crisis arises.