DiversityNursing Blog

BY JESSICA ELLIS

Confidence is a key factor in successful healthcare practice. Not only will you give better patient care when you’re more confident, but you’ll also enjoy giving care that is not hindered by second-guessing yourself. Knowledge is power! Here are a few CE courses essential for improving your basic knowledge and confidence:

1. Conflict Management

Face it: Conflict is impossible to avoid, especially in healthcare settings where tension runs high and patient outcomes may involve death. Do you know how to effectively address conflict among your peers, management and support staff? Hint: Avoidance doesn’t work. Learn how to manage conflict in a professional manner and your confidence will soar!

2. Time Management Strategies

Ever been so busy during a shift that you drive home with the nagging feeling you forgot something? Time management is essential to decreasing feelings of being overwhelmed and sloppy. This course will outline various time management methods and help you identify your own barriers to effective time management.

3. Team Building

As much as we sometimes hate to admit it, we need the assistance of our coworkers. Think about it. Are you more confident when you feel left alone to handle everything? Or are you more confident when you know your peers will jump in and help when needed? Do you know how to improve the team mentality on your unit? Having team building skills will not only improve productivity and patient safety, but also you’ll be in a better position to enjoy showing up for shift with a positive and calm attitude.

4. Medical Terminology 101

Did you ever read through doctors’ or radiologists’ notes and say to yourself, “Sounds like Greek to me!” Well, it just may be. While medical words rely heavily on Latin origins, the terminology also uses “pieces” from the Greek language. Taking a terminology course will help you memorize medical terms by body system. At the end of the day, patient chart comprehension will definitely improve your confidence!

5. Phlebotomy Basics

If you’re a seasoned nurse or provider, you may or may not be 100% up to speed in your phlebotomy or intravenous access skills. This course helps practitioners at all levels of experience review the principles of safe and appropriate venipuncture, including identifying patients and reporting critical levels of laboratory results.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent report on registered nurses predicted a 26 percent growth rate in employment for registered nurses during the 2010-2020 period. That’s considered “faster than average” when compared to all other populations.

A number of factors are expected to contribute to growth in particular areas. For instance, the aging of the baby boomer population and increasing pressure on hospitals to discharge patients as soon as possible is expected to spur job growth in outpatient care centers, as well as in home health and long-term care facilities.

For the coming year, however, it’s unlikely that the overall employment situation will be significantly different from last year.

“I haven’t seen a lot of change,” said Geraldine “Polly” Bednash, PhD, RN, FAAN, chief executive officer and executive director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), which surveys nursing schools to gauge the experiences of new graduates in finding employment.

Do your homework

If you plan to look for a new nursing job in 2013, it’s important to prepare yourself. Check out the job market in the area where you wish to live, or, if you’re open to different locations, find out where nurses with your specialty have the most opportunities. Know which employers are hiring, and what types of positions are in most demand.

For example, in the field of school nursing, some areas of the country are eagerly looking for qualified candidates to fill vacant positions in schools, while other regions can barely afford the nursing staff they already have, due to funding issues.

“It’s all over the map, depending on the state,” said Linda Davis-Alldritt, RN, president of the National Association of School Nurses. “Some states are seeing not so much a shortage of school nurses but a shortage of funded positions. The further west you go, that’s the situation, especially in California.”

Be flexible

Although the overall job market for nurses is predicted to be good, nurses in certain pockets of the country--particularly the ones with the least amount of experience--may have trouble landing their dream job right away. But that’s been true for the last few years in high-demand areas like the Bay Area in California and a few other places, and experts typically recommend that job seekers show flexibility in those situations.

If you’re willing to move or work the night shift or try other types of nursing jobs, you’ll be in a better position to get hired; this flexibility can also help new graduates acquire the basic experience that so many employers are seeking.

Take advantage of advanced education

What is most likely to help you land a new job in the current health care environment? More education and training. That might mean attaining a certification in your specialty area, or it could mean returning to school for another degree.

A baccalaureate degree could be especially useful. The Institute of Medicine’s landmark Future of Nursing report, released in 2010, called for increasing the percentage of the nursing workforce with a BSN to 80 percent by 2020, and a growing number of hospitals are prioritizing candidates with the degree.

According to information gathered from nursing schools in August 2012 by the AACN, 88 percent of new graduates with a BSN degree received job offers within four to six months of graduation.

“We’re always very pleased to see the baccalaureate graduates are getting hired,” said Bednash, adding that employers “understand they can make a choice, and they are going straight to the best-educated clinicians and hiring them.”

Graduates with master’s degrees fared even better; within four to six months after graduation, 92 percent of them were fielding job offers, according to the AACN’s survey.

“The hottest commodity on the market today is a graduate-prepared nurse practitioner,” said Bednash.

Expect more jobs on the horizon, thanks to ACA

When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in June 2012, many noted that the law will likely expand the possibilities for nurses in the future.

As the law continues to undergo implementation, more than 30 million additional people could be added to the insurance rolls. Those people will need primary care--and primary care providers. Advanced practice nurses will be called upon to fill those spots in many places, especially in light of the ongoing shortage of primary physicians. In fact, the January 2013 issue of Health Affairs even noted that the use of “non-physicians” could help improve access to care for many people and avert a physician shortage in the future.

“They ought to be thinking carefully about going on to get a graduate degree,” Bednash said of nurses who are interested in the new possibilities opening up.

The Affordable Care Act also encourages the patient-centered medical home model, which utilizes care coordinators.

“And that’s a nursing role,” said Bednash.

Published on January 18, 2013 from UMKC Today

The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Nursing has received a $2.4 million federal grant to offer full scholarships to help diversify the nursing workforce.

The program will assist 240 students who are underrepresented in nursing — men as well as those with African-American, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian or Alaskan native backgrounds. Current and new bachelor of science nursing students are eligible to receive scholarships of $10,000 per year over a four-year period. The scholarships are grants, not loans.

The minority nursing workforce hasn’t kept up with the U.S. population. Minorities made up 34 percent of the population in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  But the minority nursing workforce is only 16.8 percent; and 6.2 percent of nurses were men, according to a 2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses.

Given the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ projected need for more than 1 million new and replacement registered nurses by 2016, breaking the cultural divide is increasingly important.

“Creating a diverse nursing workforce is connected to the ability to provide quality patient care,” said Thad Wilson, associate dean for the School of Nursing, who teamed with social worker Eve McGee to apply for the grant.

The grant, awarded in October by the Health Resources and Services Administration, also will address the growing financial need students are experiencing during the challenging economy.

“I’ve seen students struggle to pay for the rent and gas,” McGee said. “The scholarships will allow students to truly focus on school.”

Preference for the scholarships is also given to those with an educationally disadvantaged background, including those for whom English is a second language, first-generation college students and those from a county in which less than 50 percent of the residents have an education beyond high school.

Students must maintain a 2.75 grade point average or above to retain the scholarship.

About the UMKC School of Nursing
The UMKC School of Nursing offers a full range of education programs including a four-year bachelor’s degree (BSN), an RN-BSN, a Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), a Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) and the Ph.D. in Nursing. Research at the UMKC School of Nursing is focused on Women’s and Children’s health and the school is a center of excellence in the provision of health care and education in these areas, emphasizing urban health care and wellness. For more information about the UMKC School of Nursing, visit http://nursing.umkc.edu/. You can also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

About the University of Missouri-Kansas City
The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), one of four University of Missouri campuses, is a public university serving more than 15,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. UMKC engages with the community and economy based on a four-part mission: life and health sciences; visual and performing arts; urban issues and education; and a vibrant learning and campus life experience. For more information about UMKC, visit http://www.umkc.edu/. You can also find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and watch us on YouTube.

Experts weigh in on how the nursing workforce has changed in last 25 years. Download, read the full PDF article -> http://bit.ly/VvUIdy

Which states will need nurses most in 2013?

by Chris Marshall

The honor is given to neonatology nonphysicians for their outstanding contributions to the field.

Erika Guillen has been a neonatal nurse for seven years, and she has spent the last four at Texas Children’s Hospital, where she works in the Level IV intensive care unit at the Newborn Center, which is reserved for newborns who have severe, life-threatening health problems.

Guillen has spent the majority of her life in the Houston area, and she has been dedicated to helping others the entire time. After graduating from nursing school, she immediately took a job working with newborns, and she began at Texas Children’s Hospital in Level II neonatal intensive care, gradually transitioning toward the higher levels, where she has the opportunity to care for babies brought in from all over the world.

“I’ve always had a passion for babies,” Guillen said. “I love taking care of babies. It’s a very special field to go into. When families trust you to care for these babies, when they tell you they go home and feel safe knowing that you’re taking care of their babies, that’s probably one of the best rewards you can get as a nurse.”

While the intangible rewards are motivation enough for Guillen, her co-workers also recognized the exemplary work she was doing, and she was nominated for the Reba Michels Hill Award by the physicians who work in the neonatal unit.

“The award is presented to people who dedicate themselves to research, education, patient care, as well as family care,” Guillen said. “Here at Texas Children’s Hospital, we take a lot of pride in involving families in the care of their babies.”

Because she works in Level IV, where most of the babies have major, often complex, health problems, it is particularly rewarding to Guillen when she sees a success story. The highlight of her job is seeing the joy displayed by parents whose children overcome seemingly overwhelming odds.

“A lot of these families come to us because we’re the best,” Guillen said. “When we’re able to give them a second chance, when we’re able to give them hope, and when we see their babies go home when they thought they would never live, that is one of the best things ever for us.”

by Crystal Owens

Years ago, nursing students would practice on each other to learn to provide care to patients.

They would inject each other with IVs and give shots to oranges.

But technology has provided training in the way of computerized manikins, designed to simulate almost any situation a student would encounter once they enter the workforce.

At The George Washington University campus in Loudoun, nursing students are provided training that goes far beyond the textbook.

The state-of-the-art nursing lab is filled with every computerized manikin a student might encounter, from pediatrics to obstetrics to general health care.

“The trend in nursing education and health care is safety of patients. We play into that in multiple levels in the nursing education field. Simulation has become an even greater part of that in order to be able to provide contextual learning for nursing students,” said Christine Seaton, clinical educator-instructor at GWU’s Loudoun campus.

The current class learning in the lab has 48 students. A new class of 44 began this week. In all, the school has graduated three classes, including the last one of 65 students. 
Students spend two semesters at the school before going on to their clinical settings.

The growth of health care simulation

Simulation has been around for health care students in a variety of fields for years, Seaton said, but it was usually for those looking to become certified as doctors. For nurses, simulation has been going strong for about 10 years, but the manikins were not nearly as complex as they are today.

“It depends on [the school’s] resources, how much they are able to provide … and the hospital because hospitals are able to train their staff using simulation,” Seaton said. 
Students start the program with the basics – how to provide outpatient assessments such as blood pressure, body temperatures and heart rates –  and progress to more complex situations, Seaton said.

Once they’ve mastered the basics, it’s on to the high-fidelity manikins – those that have computerized functions that can express pain, the sounds of lungs, bowels and the heart and simulate everything from vomiting to a seizure to childbirth and childbirth complications. The manikins have IVs in them complete with drains to provide realistic assessment details needed in a learning situation.

“We have a diversity. We like them to see the diversity not only culturally, gender, age and in the fidelity – the complexity of what the manikin can do,” Seaton said.

One manikin is named for Minnie Paxton, the supervisor for GWU’s nursing school in the 1920s. The school had to close during the Great Depression during her tenure.

Paxton is one of the manikins students see from the beginning, Seaton said, with the fundamentals all the way through their capstone experience before they go on to preceptorship – where students chose a nursing specialty and have one-on-one training with staff members in a real hospital setting.

Instructors sit in a control room and throw simulations at the students. For example, one student might believe their patient is taken care of, but instructors want to see how they act under stress. So they make the manikin’s blood pressure spike or simulate a heart attack.

“We’ll embed errors for them to find and to know that they should paying attention,” Seaton said.

Seaton, to check her students’ skills, will even sneak around and saturate a patient’s wound with fake blood to teach them to check dressings often.

The control rooms allow instructors to video tape the students in action and later replay the scenarios, pointing out mistakes that can be corrected.

Instructors will also live-stream to the classrooms so other students can see their peers’ performance.

Even at a simulated nursing station within the classrooms, students are watched from behind glass windows. Instructors want to see how students are utilizing their time, Seaton said.

The school runs a virtual hospital, where eight to nine students take care of their own manikin patients at a time.

Communication and home health care skills

Training goes beyond just knowing how to properly use medical equipment.

“A lot of it is also knowing how to communicate because communication is key in nursing as well. We’ll have them communicate with each other. We’ll have them phone as if they’re talking to physicians and learning how to provide essential details for effective care,” Seaton said.

Students also are exposed to community health settings where they evaluate a patient in a home setting.

“A lot of the trends in health care is to provide care in the home,” Seaton said. “It’s a very definite of the future.”

Health care professionals are seeing more patients in home settings because hospital stays are become shorter as medical expenses increase, said Billinda Tebbenhoff, assistant professor at GWU’s School of Nursing. Patients simply can’t afford to stay as long as they need to get complete care.

Mental health is also become more home-based, Tebbenhoff said, because many hospitals have shut down or provide only forensic beds.

“It’s amazing what people go home with … drains and IVs and medications and families are overwhelmed. I think nursing will see a huge push to community-based care,” she said. 
The school is looking also to begin a bridge program for military veterans that specialized in health care in the fall, Seaton said.

“Many of graduates are either EMTs, paramedics and they’re coming back. They may have a degree already, but they’re coming back for the BSN and to go forward even more for bachelor’s or doctorate degrees,” she said.

The biggest goal for the school, Seaton said, is to make sure students comfortable and ready for the workforce.

“The essences of where nursing education is is combining what they learn in the classroom, how they do in the experiential, the kind of learning they can’t necessarily get as frequently as they used to get in the hospitals many years ago,” Seaton said.

By Bobby Shuttleworth

At Calhoun Community College, nursing students are looking forward to the day they get their certification, degree and begin in the work force. While some will end up in a traditional role, others may look forward to adventure.

Brian Soloman is ready to get into a career and be with his children. 

"I would like to go on to possibly UAH and consider even pursuing a nurse practitioner," said Soloman.

Takicha Barrett said her goals revolve around the very young. 

"My plan is to successfully obtain a job, hopefully in the pediatrics department. I love kids," she said.

Soloman said he's heard of exotic locations, but he wants to stay home with his children.   He said those locations are everywhere. 

"...On oil rigs, people that are offshore. And there's even contractors that are in the Middle East or in the theatre in Afghanistan and that were in Iraq; some of the companies have also hired out nurses," he said.

Bret McGill is the Dean of the Health Sciences Division at Calhoun Community College. He said the options are almost limitless.   

"A couple of jobs that come to mind, one is a school nurse and just about every school has an LPN or an RN that works to take care of children and administer medications," said McGill.

One of the areas people may not be familiar with is in the industrial setting.

Candy Fall is an occupational nurse at BP. She's worked at several industries before honing her skills here with a focus on wellness. She writes articles for the corporate newsletter, an internal TV station, and much more.  

"This particular plant, I'm responsible for medical surveillance for each employee that's here," Fall said.

She said BP is big into wellness programs to keep their employees healthy, like flu shots and more.  

"We have a fitness center reimbursement program. We have fruit of the day, where we have fruit delivered to the plant three times a week and our employees and our contract employees can have a piece of fruit to keep them from going to the vending machines," she added.

The program at Calhoun is giving nurses an opportunity to pursue a rewarding job, while helping to keep employees healthy.

Copyright 2013 WAFF. All rights reserved.