Letter to my future nursing students

Dear Students,

I wanted to write you to tell you about my thoughts and where I was prior to technology and where I believe I am now.  I hope by the end of this letter you will want to embrace the world of technology to its fullest.  


In terms of teaching prior to technology instruction, I used the basics...                                     
      
email, word document, powerpoint, and google.

The simplest of assignments were sent to me in word format and uploaded to email... How boring, right?

I felt the learning from the books and searching the library databases was plenty for credible research and learning.  

Now, I feel that I have broadened my horizons and can integrate many learning activities that are student centered and foster learning and understanding.  I can integrate instructional information with SnagIT.  I can give you feedback more personally with a Voki or with audio feedback from Powerpoint.  I can even send you videos with You Tube or make videos to say hi and interact with the online students.  I can even teach you all to use these programs.   

You all can learn to use Skype and interact with each other in groups or one to one conversation.  Also, if you're stuck at home not understanding information or how to use the programs, you can Skype me, and we can screen share and walk you through the process.  It's all about interactive learning and doing it to remember it.  

I even hope to be able to provide instructional and purposeful virtual field trips for you (students) on places we would never be able to travel to.  I'd just like to provide the best experience! Integrating technology provides you all a means of learning through audio, audio/visual, actually developing your own masterpieces, and through communicating and collaborating with fellow peers and myself.  This will also make you all more prepared and tech savvy for your future careers.

Please take a few minutes to watch this video on how technology and information sharing is changing...

Hope all of you who read this are as amazed and excited to learn about nursing, technology, and putting the two together.  

Sincerely,

Ashley Ferrando, RN, BSN 

Dose Calculations

Dose calculations are very important for Nurses to understand.  Knowing how to do dose calculations will enable you, as a nurse, to properly prepare and administer medications to all of your patients.  Often times, medications do not come in the dose they are ordered for.  For example, a syringe comes pre-filled with 6 mg of Morphine.  If you only want to give 3 mg of Morphine, you need to know how to figure this problem out without giving too much or too little.

Please do the conversions to the left of this text. Place them in your response to this blog.










This PDF file has some practice questions in it.  Take the time to try these. When you are done, there are answers written out at the bottom.

Blog replies from Ashley Ferrando

Patient Safety

Patient safety is a need that is very important, and Joint Commission has established patient safety goals for 2013.  Most patient mishaps are preventable and prevention starts with nursing care and properly informing the patient and their family members.  Creating an environment that promotes patient safety and encourages prevention of injury and infection is the key to success.

 There are many nursing diagnoses that fall under safety.

Nursing Diagnoses:

• Body temperature, altered, risk for 
• Environmental interpretation syndrome, impaired Health maintenance, altered 
• Home maintenance management, impaired 
• Hyperthermia 
• Hypothermia 
• Infection, risk for 
• Injury, risk for 
• Perioperative positioning injury, risk for 
• Physical mobility, impaired 
• Poisoning, risk for 
• Protection, altered 
• Self-mutilation, risk for 
• Skin integrity, impaired 
• Skin integrity, impaired, risk for 
• Suffocation, risk for 
• Thermoregulation, ineffective 
• Tissue integrity, impaired 
• Trauma, risk for 
• Violence, (actual)/risk for

Watch the video below and pick out one patient safety measure addressed.  Talk about why it is important and what you can do to improve patient safety in that area.  

Head to Toe Assessments

Head to toe assessments are important to perform, because they help identify abnormalities of the body systems and potential problem, and they help compare the present assessment from a past assessment to distinguish if any changes have occurred.

There are some important aspects of a physical exam that you, as the examiner, should remember.  A good relationship needs to be initiated in order to successfully do a head to toe assessment.  The patient needs to trust you and be able to talk openly with you.  Always wash your hands prior to touching the patient.  Always respect the privacy of the patient and be kind, courteous, and caring.  Keep the patient's body covered as much as possible in order to prevent them from being uncomfortable.  Always consider the patients' cultures and how physical assessments may make them feel.  Avoid being distracted by other paperwork, pagers, phones, and overhead pages.  Do NOT let your patient feel like you are rushing through their exam and be sure to always inform the patient before continuing through the examination and thank them.

The body systems include:

It may help to assess all of these systems by literally going from head to toe as a means of organization.  This will help keep your assessment in order and will help keep a constant flow of organized thought.  Each system has special pieces of information for you (as the nurse) to investigate.  Take a look at the PDF file that gives an overview of what to assess in each system.  

Reflect on your head to toe assessments in clinical this far, and address what you are doing well at and what you need to improve on.  This self- awareness and reflection will allow you to better care for you patients in the future.

Assessment form examples:

http://brains.nursemind.com/H2Tassessment.pdf    

http://nurse-2-bee.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-clinical-assessment-sheet.html

http://www.cod.edu/programs/nursing/pdf/head_to_toe_assessment2010121310.pdf

http://www.mccd.edu/alliedhealth/vocn/VN%20On-Line%20Forms/Head%20to%20Toe%20Patient%20Assessment.pdf

Effective communication

Effective communication is key to a successful relationship with your patient.  Communicating involves interaction between yourself, the patient, and possibly the patient's family.  Communication can tell you or anyone else how the patient is feeling and what they are trying to say.  Bad communication will hinder relationship and can hinder the outcomes of patients' health.  It causes misunderstandings, distress, and lack of confidence in the care they are receiving.  If you are not truly listening to all their means of communication, something can be missed.  Your communication to them is just as important when giving direction or providing instruction on medications or diet changes.  It's important to evaluate their understanding, too. 

When patients cannot verbally communicate they rely on non-verbal communication, so this is another reason understanding communication is important!  Often, when patients cannot verbally communicate, there are communication boards available to help them point out how they are feeling, what they need, or what they want to do.  Some communication boards can look like the one above.

 All human beings have emotions, and these emotions are most often portrayed though non-verbal communication.  It is very hard for some people to explain or verbally tell other people how they feel.  Thus, non-verbal cues like crying, smiling, crossing their arms over their body, squeezing their eyes closed, or grimacing can be important to note.  

This video represents non-verbal communication and how the look on someone's face or the way someone is dressed can be portrayed as what he/she is trying to say about oneself.  This non-verbal communication video also incorporates some statistics that all of us should keep in mind when we are verbally communicating.  All verbal communication coincides with non-verbal communication.

After reading the links provided and watching some or all of the video, I'd like to have you all respond to how you feel you communicate with people in general and areas where you may need to improve.  Do you notice yourself standing a certain way more often than others? Are you good at maintaining eye contact? Does your facial expression correlate with what you are speaking? Do you speak too softly or loudly? Do you roll your eyes in certain situations? These are all important to consider and it's worth a self assessment to better communicate with all people and your patients.