Night shift nurses. Strength in a silo?
Night duty. Personally, I hate, hate, hate, hate it.
But I have the greatest respect for those nurses who either do a lot of it. Or chose to make it their life.
A study to be published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing looks at the experiences of nurses working the night shift at three regional hospitals in Australia.
Data was collected via questionnaires, interviews and diary entries over a six month period in 2010 and was augmented by a series of semi structured interviews.
Of the 14 study participants, 10 were on permanent night duty and all were female.
The results of the study found a very strong cohesive team amongs...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 11, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: reflective practice. Source Type: blogs
Anatomical Quilling.
Lisa Nilsson is an artist who constructs reproductions of anatomical cross sections by rolling and shaping narrow strips of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. This technique, known as Quilling has been around since the Renaissance when nuns and monks used to produce art works from worn out bibles.
Her works are displayed in carefully constructed, hand made silk covered wooden boxes, with an aim to pull the works away from the world of scientific specimens, and move them into the direction of religious reliquaries.
She says, “I like to emphasize the reverential and the precious; to have a look insi...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 10, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: ectopics Source Type: blogs
The Thunderbox Papers: Mouth Hygiene.
The Thunderbox Papers are a set of short pithy one page information sheets.
The idea is that you stick one on your toilet door for one week and commit to learning the information during each visit.
A Thunderbox refers to an old Australian ‘out-house’ or outside toilet. These toilets were often nothing more than a small drafty wooden shed containing a seat over a deep hole in the ground.
Toilet paper consisted of old pages from newspapers or magazines threaded together with string and hung on a hook.
I will post a Thunderbox Paper here every week or so. Stick it in your toilet at work (or home) and use your busi...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 10, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the nurses desk: Source Type: blogs
Note2Nurse day. May 9th 2013!
This year International Nurses and Midwives week runs from May 6–12.
Coincidentally my 50th birthday (hint, hint) falls on May 9.
So this all seems rather a fortuitous moment of auspicious planetary alignment…. to run the third annual Note2Nurse day.
The idea of Note2Nurse came to me during one of our departments regular practice development sessions back in 2010, in which we were looking at ways of improving staff morale during the thick winter months of high workloads and falling morale.
Back then, I wrote:
Its a simple thing, but by giving permission for nurses to take a few moments on one day of the year to wri...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 7, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: ectopics Source Type: blogs
Sometimes….death fails.
A short film on death.
Dji. Death fails from simpals on Vimeo. (Source: impactEDnurse)
Source: impactEDnurse - February 3, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the funnybone. Source Type: blogs
ECT4Health.
I’m always looking to highlight nurses who are utilizing online technology to provide quality education and professional development for their colleagues.
One such nurse is Rob Trimmings.
ECT4Health is a site dedicated to providing education, consultancy and training (ECT) for nurses.
Rob is a nurse with over 25 years experience in emergency, psychiatry and hyperbaric (which interestingly my spellchecker just corrected to hyperbolic) nursing who wants nurses to get more passionate about the science in their art.
Rob has provided educational programs to nurses and paramedics since 2007 working with organisation...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 3, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the nurses desk: Source Type: blogs
Carpe Diem: it’s a nurse thing.
(Source: impactEDnurse)
Source: impactEDnurse - February 3, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the funnybone. Source Type: blogs
Tip: how to collect a baby’s urine on demand.
One of the most frustrating and time consuming activities that befalls a nurse working in the paediatric area of the emergency department is obtaining a midstream urine collection from a baby.
Some units may opt for using sterile stick-on collection bags. But my own experience has been that this method is less than effective often resulting in a contaminated specimen that is not really mid-stream anyways.
And collection of a spontaneous pee (often delegated to the parents) although hilarious to watch, is also sub-optimal.
A recent paper from Madrid proposes a method to produce a flow of urine on demand in infants. And I ca...
Source: impactEDnurse - February 1, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: tips and tricks Source Type: blogs
start a team resource management folder in your unit.
You can never solve a problem by using the same thinking that created it.
– Albert Einstein.
One of the weak links in the chain of healthcare delivery is the disparity between the self evident need for sustained quality teamwork in the clinical environment, and the lack of time spent developing this complex set of competencies.
The commercial aviation industry developed the concept of Crew Resource Management to teach situational awareness, improved communication, task distribution, and optimal teamwork.
These functions are seen by this industry as vitally important to improve the quality of service delivery and (even mo...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 29, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the nurses desk: Source Type: blogs
Using social media to enhance our profession.
Nursing is changing.
Never before have we had the opportunity to learn from, and communicate with our colleagues with such ease. It is truly the time of inter-nursing.
We are experiencing an outpouring of high quality educational and developmental materials that are now freely available on the web via social media. No longer is there any excuses for not being able to access teachings from your peers (even though, unfortunately there are plenty of excuses for not being given enough time to do so – but don’t get me started).
You just need to tap into the (reliable) resources, and you will be on the fast-track to bett...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 28, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: clinical skills Source Type: blogs
caption this: the paramedics.
Our paramedics.
Can you come up a caption that best tells the story of this picture.
The best caption will be awarded 1,ooo impactedpoints.
Impactedpoints can be exchanged for extra days off, free coffee & cake, and back massages from your unit manager (at participating hospitals). (Source: impactEDnurse)
Source: impactEDnurse - January 27, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: the funnybone. Source Type: blogs
get your t-shirt & mug
I have just finished designing my own impactednurse.com t-shirt to sell on Zazzle.
Just so I can indulge in a little shameless self-promotion of my site.
I have no idea if this sort of thing might interest anyone else, but I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out.
So it is up for grabs….
If you would like one:
You can order the t-shirt here.
You can also order the mug here.
The t-shirts are all fully customizable as far as styles and sizes go. And no, they are not cheap. But I have purchased products from Zazzle in the past and I can report that their t-shirts are of an excellent quality that will last.
Note...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 25, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: ectopics Source Type: blogs
Graded assertiveness: PACE.
Graded assertiveness is a learned skill. It is a process of communicating, advocating and directing with hardcore clarity that is useful in stressful or crisis scenarios.
There are many factors that can block good communication during critical events including differences in seniority or experience, job position, personal power, personal agendas, fear of ‘loss of face’ and plain old pig-stubbornness.
One form of graded assertiveness that has been developed, can be remembered with the word PACE.
PACE consists of 4 stages or tiers of communication. Each one is a measured escalation that systematically (if the pro...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 24, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: clinical skills Source Type: blogs
Graded assertiveness: PACE.
Graded assertiveness is a learned skill. It is a process of communicating, advocating and directing with hardcore clarity that is useful in stressful or crisis scenarios.
There are many factors that can block good communication during critical events including differences in seniority or experience, job position, personal power, personal agendas, fear of ‘loss of face’ and plain old pig-stubbornness.
One form of graded assertiveness that has been developed, can be remembered with the word PACE.
PACE consists of 4 stages or tiers of communication. Each one is a measured escalation that systematically (if the pro...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 24, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: clinical skills Source Type: blogs
Caring for same sex parented families.
As part of a research project being run by run by the Bouverie Centre, and La Trobe University they have produced a document to provide healthcare workers with information around caring for same-sex and gender diverse families.
Same-sex parented families may be described as families parented by people who identify themselves as non-heterosexual, this may include gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT) or other non-heterosexual identities.
The document contains information from same-sex parented families highlighting what they really value when using healthcare services.
Things such as:
An accepting and affirming attitu...
Source: impactEDnurse - January 24, 2013 Category: Nurses Authors: impactEDnurse Tags: clinical skills Source Type: blogs
