My professional role is as a house supervisor. I'm basically the fireman for the facility on nights weekends and holidays. I did not really expect to have to teach much when I took this position, but the opposite is true. I teach more now than every before.
As the house mouse (it's a nickname our group picked up) nurses and physicians call and request information constantly. A new nurse who's never placed and NG tube or done a central line dressing change or changed the collection container on a chest tube will call me for assistance. Physicians will call and ask about policies when they are told they can't put a patient on an insulin drip on the medical floor. Our group has become the mentor for many of our nursing staff who do not know how to find the information they need to provide evidence based care. I have also been asked questions by patients unhappy with their care. In these situations I teach them about evidence based practices and the tools we use to make sure the most appropriate care is provided to them.
Teaching occurs in every role. I see everyone from physicians to CNAs teach patients and peers.
I tried to access the Wiki from my smart phone, but could not find the underscore (_) . I'll look into this and, with luck, figure it out.
I did figure out how to post the link in the Gadgets and for that I'm kinda pleased with myself :-)
I can relate to your experience of not expecting to do a lot of teaching with certain nursing positions just to find out that is not true. When I took my current job (medical informatics) I thought the same thing and found out that my perceptions were very misguided, go figure! There is no escaping the role of teaching in nursing :)
ReplyDelete