With mere weeks left until Summer Vacation, we decided to put some tips together for those instructors who either have a lightened schedule or have the summer off.
We mentioned a new site that we found on our last blog post, but after looking through their resources, we've decided we need to dedicate a whole post to this amazing, free, resource: PracticalClinicalSkills.com.
We recently did a webinar on using outside resources within your EHR system. If you're a customer of EHR Tutor, feel free to check out the Resource Library to watch the recording, but if you're not, we're posting some very basic ideas below:
We often talk about how an EHR system can be used in the classroom as well as in the Simulation Lab or after clinical rotations. However, we realized we rarely post ideas for how to do so on this blog. Sure, we've mentioned it in passing in relation to EMS/EMT programs, Vaccines, Nutrition and our recently added Polling Feature, but we've decided to do a few posts specifically with classroom and lecture ideas.
We recently attended the COADN conference in San Diego and met a lot of amazing schools and vendors. Like always, we thought we'd highlight a great vendor and point out a few differences between their product and ours for the sake of clarity.
Now that charting is electronic, a lot of Nursing students skip straight from not knowing information to being presented with checklists and drop-down menus. In the past students had to understand, remember and recall information just to complete a chart. Now, it's become an exercise in choosing the best answer from the options.
It may sound silly, but how many instructors have gotten charts/assignments/etc. from Nursing and Allied Health students that are just plain unreadable? The student may understand everything there is to know about cleaning wounds, taking precautions with patients on blood thinners and how to properly bathe an elderly patient, but they still can't spell ostomy or Coumadin or sputum.
It's always a little bit tricky to find a good balance between useful and quick activities to keep students busy the day before a holiday or break. You don't want to start teaching a new topic, but you don't want to completely waste the day away either.
Anyone who has worked in Nursing education knows the problem: Clinical sites are hard to find, good clinical instructors are expensive and students' clinical experiences vary greatly. We've tried to supplement clinical hours with increased time in the Simulation Lab but for those schools who adhere strictly to evidence based learning, there was no definitive research proving Simulation hours are as valuable as Clinical ones.
If you've read this blog in the past, you know we love sharing information from other vendors we meet at conferences. Whether it's an amazing moisturizer that lasts handwash after handwash or a book full of sing-songy memorization tools, we love things that make our lives (and our future nurses' education) better.