Unit Based Staff Educator??

[BSN2CRNA]

I am currently doing a project for school (going for my MSN) in which I am proposing having unit based nurse educators. At the large hospital where I work there is a formal education department tasked with training the staff but, getting new information to the staff is not very effective and is very impractical given the small size of the training department and the large size of the institution (800 bed hospital). Therefore, if each unit had its own educator it would be better.

How do you stay current with changes in your facilities changes in policies, documentation, evidence based research, core measures, joint comission, etc??? Things seem to change on a daily basis.

Thanks!!!

Chris

[KeyMaster]

Our hospital has an internal web based education site. Changes in policy or any education that does not require classroom instruction is posted there. Staff must log in, review the content and confirm that they have read and understand the material. It is all trackable so we can keep up with who has checked thier updates and who has not. The Clinical Directors for each area are sent a list every quarter of staff members who are behind.

Some areas of our hospital have unit based educators, but what we have experienced is that sometimes those educators will hear about an upcoming change in a meeting and feel empowered to go and develop their own material for their units without input from CES. Sometimes the materials are innapropriate or incomplete, and different units end up with different information. We have also seen UBE's that will take the material developed by CES and "tweak" it for their unit - because despite the fact that we are supposed to be standardized as a system - their unit does things "their own way".

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

We obtain new information haphazardly. Sometimes via internet, sometimes an inservice, an occasional email. Most times, sorry to say, we don't learn until a mistake is made, and most times, we didn't realize a mistake was made until after the fact. The above poster mentioned some awesome ways that would certainly help our facility.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

We don't necessarily have unit based educators, as that is cost prohibitive, but we do have educators based on specialities.....for example there is an educator for trauma ICU, and educator for cardiology, and educator for med-surg, an educator for neurosciences, an educator for mother-baby.....etc.

The educators are the one's primarily responsible with keeping us updated, but we also get emails from various department heads about changes.

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

We used to have clinical nurse specialists for every broad specialty, med/surg, maternal/child, critical care, and so on.

We were sent to a major hospital for more specialized classes such as orthopedic CNS for us ICU nurses on post op care because more hip Fx patients were coming to us post op.

These wondeful nurses were available on weekdays and came to give us night nurses inservices and to test our competencies. It was great.

Now most have become managers (a waste of expertise IMO) or NPs (patients still benefit).

I know one former CNS who is a manager at another hospital now. She stays on the unit helping and teaching staff, patients, families, and physicians. Her charge nurses do the schedule and evaluations. The nurses love her and rightly so. We loved her whe she was "ours' too.

[ecat81]

We have unit based educators but they more fill the role of policy making and meetings than actually holding classes and providing up to date information. I think it is a wonderful idea if educators are getting the new information and refresher courses to the staff.

[nerdtonurse?, BSN, RN]

One thing that hasn't worked at our place is that the "nurse educators" can sometimes just be the "teacher's pet" not the nurse with the years of hands on experience. I kid you not, our last "nurse educator" on our floor was taking patients one night and literally asked, "What's NIDDM?" We looked at her, thinking she was kidding. She wasn't. Finally, one of the other nurses said, "Um, that would be non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus...." This wasn't a new nurse, this was our "staff resource" -- and yes, we're doomed...

[truey85]

I work at a small community hospital, about 95 beds, we have unit based clinical educators for all of our units. Some are combined like PCU and ICU. I am extremely impressed with the effectiveness and availability of both information and hands-on help. Our educator is on the floor during the week and she encourages us to use her if we need help with a procedure or if we are doing something new or if we don't feel confident with a task that is unfamilar. Our educators at our hospital don't claim to know everything, but they will always help us to find out the awnsers or information that we need.