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Hospital, nursing college partnership allows critical-care nurses to sharpen skills |
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Jim Winkler |
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May 8, 2008
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| Jayne Murnen, UT Medical Center intensive care staff nurse and critical-care staff educator, left, and Debra Mattin, College of Nursing instructor and director of the Center for Continuing Nursing Education and director of the Nursing Learning Resources Center, right, coordinated the critical-care skills lab session last month to ensure that the skills of UTMC critical- and intermediate-care care nurses are up-to-date. |
A collaborative partnership between The University of Toledo College of Nursing and the UT Medical Center is helping the hospital’s 140 critical- and intermediate-care nurses keep their professional and technical skills sharp and fresh.
The first of four daylong sessions slated this year aimed at helping them meet standards of care and professional practice established by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and other governing agencies was held last month in the College of Nursing’s state-of-the-art nursing skills and simulation laboratory in the Howard Collier Building on the Health Science Campus. The nursing skills lab resembles a hospital acute-care unit.
Nineteen intermediate coronary care unit, medical coronary care unit and surgical intensive care unit nurses representing all three shifts ran through different patient-care scenarios using lifelike mannequins and state-of-the-art equipment.
The nurses simulated care of peripherally inserted central-line catheters, or PICC lines, monitoring intracranial brain pressure and drains, and administering neuromuscular blocking drugs. They also simulated care of paralyzed patients as well as troubleshooting and removing central venous and arterial monitoring lines and pulmonary artery catheters.
Jayne Murnen, a registered nurse and UTMC critical-care staff educator, organized the lab, and Debra Mattin, nursing instructor and director of the Center for Continuing Nursing Education and the Nursing Learning Resources Center, assisted in organizing the program site.
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| Erich Piland, staff nurse in the UT Medical Center Medical Intensive Care Unit, instructed colleagues on bedside procedures during a recent critical-care skills education program in the College of Nursing Learning Resources Center. |
Murnen said the program gives nurses with critical-care experience a chance to reaffirm and expand on the knowledge and skills they already have, but may not have access to or use consistently.
“It is, in a sense, a refresher course on current practices, but it also provides an ideal environment to present new skills, knowledge, equipment or procedures used at the bedside,” Murnen added.
Clinical dilemmas, new therapies and technology, increased patient-acuity levels, and medical controversies continually impact the care nurses provide and require they keep their clinical skills up to date and integrate the most current data and research-based best practices into daily care.
Murnen said the sessions offer the nurses a relaxed, non-threatening setting to learn and an opportunity to ask questions.
“The small group size interaction is beneficial because it facilitates learning,” Mattin said. “The lab approximates what it’s like to work with patients in a real clinical environment. The simulation also allows us to set standard levels of performance.”
Ten staff nurses evaluated colleagues at 23 different workstations, instructing and analyzing their bedside techniques and knowledge of procedures. In addition to Murnen, other evaluators were nurses Deana Sievert, Connie Mueller, Nadine Nowak, Erich Piland, Trina Elieff, Jill Sholl, Sue Mikkonen, Deb Fedderke and Ian Byrne.
Before the sessions, the nurses reviewed Mosby’s Nursing Skills, a Web-based online collection of critical-care nursing skills content and skills competency exams that has been adopted by the hospital.
The programs come at a time when UT Medical Center’s intensive care units have been very busy, caring for more patients who are very ill and require tertiary care — conditions like a heart attack, stroke or trauma caused by an auto accident or who have life-threatening organ failure or severe pneumonia. Patients can go from stable to critical condition very quickly, and nurses have to be able to recognize that and react quickly.
The hospital is one of three in Toledo that feature Level One trauma centers that provide comprehensive care to critically ill medical and surgical patients.
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