Using Contemporary e-Learning Tools to Teach Staff How to Use New Online Documentation Systems

Medical centers, hospitals, and health care practices are implementing electronic documentation systems and regularly adding new features to these systems. Training users to effectively use these systems in a scalable way has been a challenge. Learners learn at different rates and have different needs. While traditional face to face instruction has been the gold standard, eLearning technologies can provide acceptable alternatives. This poster will demonstrate three eLearning methodologies for training.

Twenty Plus Years of Distance Learning: Lessons Learned

Private institutions of higher education in the United States were hesitant to institute programs of distance learning for fear that they could not maintain the quality of the education they had delivered in face-to-face programs. Vanderbilt University allowed their School of Nursing to embark on such an endeavor in 1996, as long as quality measures were incorporated. The result has been a comprehensive resource support team using Quality Matters and an increase in program rankings.

Integrating Informatics Content into the Nursing Curriculum

Contemporary nursing curricula require that nursing informatics content be integrated across the various levels of the programs that are offered. Many such programs face national accreditation requirements that typically relate more to technology than to informatics. International standards vary in these requirements. How can nursing programs meet these vastly different criteria yet continue to level informatics content that follows quality curriculum standards? This presentation describes one approach across programs that considers already developed competencies in nursing informatics while also taking into consideration the various roles that the graduates will have to assume in advanced practice nursing roles. Levels discussed include the baccalaureate, master's, doctorate in nursing practice, and the traditional Doctor of Philosophy degrees.

Distance Education Programs: The Technical Support to Be Successful

Academic success requires support on a variety of levels as well as access to contemporary tools and services. Supporting students enrolled in a successful higher education distance learning program, requires a strong, properly trained IT support staff in addition to a stable IT environment. Our distance education program began with a regional market but has grown significantly over the past few years. This is primarily due to the success of our distance education tools and support which have contributed to achieving a ranking of eleventh of best graduate schools in nursing according to the U.S. News and World Report. The entire student population is "Bring Your Own Devices" (BYOD). Critical to this support is the initial configuration and loading of needed software during the first week of orientation. All of this success requires a robust team of members prepared in a range of skill sets from networking to instructional design.

Teaching during a pandemic event: are universities prepared?

As the threat of pandemic events streaks across the planet, the question then becomes can universities, particularly health science centers charged with producing the next generation of health care providers, continue their teaching and educational mission by offering classes in a distance environment, completely uncentralized, away from the traditional centralized campus? A sampling of campus websites were reviewed to gather a sense of how well prepared we are, followed up with a survey administered to faculty and staff in the School of Nursing at Vanderbilt University. The concern being that if a technology rich environment such as Vanderbilt is not fully prepared to continue teaching in a pandemic event, what concerns should we have for other institutions providing health care provider education that may not have access to the resources a Vanderbilt has? Finally, a set of recommendations to schools is presented, based on the findings.

Using the virtual reality world of second life to teach nursing faculty simulation management

Healthcare faculty members have come to depend on the advantages of teaching with clinical simulation, but not all faculty are competent in their ability to manage students during the simulation experience. This federally funded proposal provided the opportunity for nursing faculty to participate in a synchronous learning event using the virtual reality world of Second Life (SL). Based on competencies, faculty participants were guided through the simulation process by a "Master Teacher." Participants then became the teacher and chose the settings, objectives, and clinical data to manage their own simulation using avatar role assignments. Feedback populated the participant informatics dashboard, so that progress towards their competencies was recorded. Another unique informatics application was the use of the Synthetic Derivative project to use de-identified patient data to promote better clinical realism. Additional evaluation activities regarding content, appropriate use of the technology, and design features were assessed. The development of the SL environment for this educational study provides the setting in which to pilot test the provision of actual clinical care that does not require "hands-on" interventions.

Data mining results from an electronic clinical log for nurse practitioner students

Traditional techniques for collecting data on clinical experiences have been greatly flawed. Data cannot be easily collected in real time to make programmatic or placement changes "on the fly". Furthermore, it is difficult to look at data across students, specialty areas, and years because the data is typically not in a digital format. In response to this problem, the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing has created a web/PDA based clinical log to document the kinds of clinical experiences the students are having. Since our initial report, three years ago, we have collected three years worth of data, over 220,000 different patient encounters. This past year the data has been very complete, giving a full picture of the types of experiences the students are having. Our faculty have begun to analyze the data in the clinical log to examine the kind of experiences the students are having and to make programmatic changes and placement adjustments in real time. In general, the results supported that students in the various specialties managed patients and performed services appropriate to their specialty. Patients varied in ages, ethnic groups, payment sources, and medical diagnoses. Students did progress from an observer role to a more independent role in either a linear fashion or in a more biphasic mode with an increase in the observer role at the start of a new semester.

The development of an online clinical log for advanced practice nursing students: a case study

Three years ago at the Medinfo conference a prototype version of a clinical log for nursing students at Vanderbilt University was demonstrated. The purpose of the log is to document the types of clinical experiences the students are participating in as part of their academic program. We collected log data during that first year and received ongoing formative feedback from both students and faculty regarding its current feature set and desirable features for future implementations. Most of the requested new features have now been implemented. This paper describes some of the latest features of the clinical log, the advantages and disadvantages of ongoing development versus acquiring commercial products, and the procedures and results we have put in place to gather from faculty and students the features they want to see in the log. This paper also documents some of the data from early data mining.

Preparing our public health nursing leaders with informatics skills to combat bioterrorism in the United States

Our public health nursing leaders are practicing in a new world responding to terrorism and other threats to our nation's health. Informatics solutions provide a viable opportunity to respond to new pressures on the public health system, changes in healthcare delivery, and improvements in information technology. Informatics competencies for public health workers in the United States have been developed by a working group sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These competencies provide the framework in which to design a series of activities prepared exclusively to meet the needs of our public health nursing leaders using contemporary informatics tools and solutions. Many of these leaders graduated during an era where informatics was not recognized as a necessary component of their curriculum The completion of this proposed futuristic curriculum will allow our public health nursing leaders to work more efficiently and provide greater influence on public policy.

Meeting the informatics needs of today's nursing students

Today's nurses must be well prepared with informatics skills in order to work more efficiently and safely in this world of evidence-based practice and consumer health. Competency based education provides the mechanism to measure selected skills at various levels and provides a standardized framework from which educators can plan appropriate learning activities. Informatics competencies have been developed for various levels of nursing, but none have been developed that level the educational preparation of the students or are designed to meet a cluster of identified courses. This paper will describe informatics competencies for nursing students across academic levels. The proposed integration plan can be used to identify informatics competencies for faculty and contemporary strategies to meet the informatics needs of today's nurses.

Demonstration: An online clinical log for nurse practitioner students

The Vanderbilt University School of Nursing (VUSN) has advanced practice nursing students in clinical experiences across the USA who are required to provide written documentation on their encounters. Prior log activities had consisted of responses on optical scan sheets and descriptive logs submitted at the end of each semester. Faculty wanted a more contemporary and efficient environment that would allow students to collect their clinical log data at their point of care and enter into an online database. The solution by VUSN informatics staff was a web/PDA based clinical log that can be used during the course of the semester.

Emergency preparedness curriculum in nursing schools in the United States

With concern about bioterrorism and inadequacies in responding to mass casualty events, health care professionals have been placed in the category of first responders. The International Nursing Coalition for Mass Casualty Education (INCMCE) was established to plan strategically to address the educational needs of the nation's nurses. This study sought to determine the types and levels of disaster preparedness curricula being delivered or in development in nursing programs at all levels. INCMCE surveyed 2,013 deans or directors of nursing schools as to curricula for emergency preparedness prior to September 11, 2001, and during the two following academic years. Initial requests were sent via email and the US postal service. Respondents were invited to answer the online survey so data could be directly entered into a database for purposes of data analysis. Responses were received from 348 schools of nursing. Curriculum plans, followed by competency lists, were selected as most helpful for teaching content in disaster preparedness. The survey results validated the general assumption that nursing programs provide limited curricula in this area. The mean number of hours of disaster preparedness content provided, approximately four hours, did not change significantly over three academic years. The study also showed that 75 percent of respondents thought that nurse faculty were inadequately prepared in the area of disaster management. The study established a baseline for future curricular growth.

Genetics and the World Wide Web: an introduction

Nurses cannot escape the impact that new genetics discoveries and the World Wide Web (WWW) have on nursing practice. This article presents an overview of the WWW, offers examples of genetics-related WWW sites, and illustrates their applicability to neonatal nursing.