VA Nurse III Proficiency

Kareina22, BSN · Sep 2, 2018

What department do you work in? What I have found, is that you notice things that need to be fixed, or "not right," in your department. Follow that thought and proceed to collaborate with your manager, and other departments to find answers and to develop a plan. Then it is time to implement the action/change. Perhaps it is the lack of a policy, or perhaps your unit is having trouble with a metric, such as patient satisfaction, blood culture contamination rates, clotted blood specimens. Are you a member of any committees? Staffing methodology is a good one. Perhaps identify a new evidence-based practice that is new to your facility. You can research, collaborate, formulate education (perhaps a power point & pre- and post-education questionnaires) and initiate your project. You can measure the increase in passing knowledge of whatever your subject matter is, but you should track its impact on your facility as well. This will probably take time, but the good stuff often does. You can take your education to other units and track their passing knowledge, etc. Perhaps you could research a new device that "fixes" a problem at your facility and could propose it for trial (like the SteriPath device for blood cultures). Let your manager know you would like some added responsibility and before long you may be the one she reaches out to. So many people don't want to do extra work, but for nurse III, you need to do extra. Hope this helps. Also, does your facility have a Sepsis Protocol? Great idea if it does not...

TNnurse91, BSN, RN · Oct 31, 2018

thank you so much! I am in the ICU. I have a long list of potential projects that are EVB but we can't do them if they have already been done. I'm not sure what has been done and what hasn't. My proficiency is due at the end of November so I will start working on that after my proficiency.