Today, I worked on my Apple PC and found out that I could almost connect Contribute to Healthstream's authoring site. I also accessed the tutorials that I signed up for on Total Learning - a site for learning how to use computer applications. I bought Adobe's e-Learning Site from Journey Ed so that I have the latest version of Captivate and all the tools to make e-learning work. Because I have not used the Apple desk top in almost a month, I had to update all sorts of stuff. That means restarting and waiting and running a system scan, etc. Lots of lost time.

A botanical drawing friend called and we are going to try and connect on Monday. She is here from California and visiting family in Princeton. Maybe we can meet in between and go to lunch - museums are all closed on Monday following the holiday. 

Awesome things I learned today! Between watching Adobe's how-to and some You Tube videos on Captivate, I am really learning how to manipulate PPT and Captivate. I found out PPT has a tool to remove backgrounds so that I can isolate subjects - way cool!! I can take any picture and pull out pieces to make them work as I need it. Also, I learned how to fade edges to blend and stitch images together.

I stumbled onto  website of a hospital that has a published how-to Captivate type elearning module that is 75 minutes long. What I found amazing is that the person who created it used the live Production system to record the training module and there seem to be real patient's information displayed in the video! Wow - this is probably a HIPAA violation. When making training materials, a designer must be cognizant of protecting a patient's private information as well as all proprietary customizations to the EMR. But, I liked the format of this module and would love to be able to publish this to our intranet. Come to think of it, I should probably ask permission from marketing to have it published on the intranet so that it is easy to access from both the intranet and our EMR. Our portal modules are so limited in size and accessibility. Time today 1 hour.

Today, I spent quite  bit of time exploring Captivate and discovered that I can send links of our projects in a zip file format via email. I think this is the answer to teaching providers just in time education. I tested the format in multiple ways and in doing so I found an option to print the entire captivate project. Yes! I think I might be able to create a PDF with all these links to my education job aides and create one huge reference manual. This should allow me to turn in my project for my practicum in a smaller file size so that I do not go over the 15 MB's which is our limit.Total time today working on learning how to create the Captivate - 1 hour. 

My PowerPoint skills have been fine tuned after reviewing many of the tutorials I found on Tom Khulman's blog - 100 PowerPoint Tutorials. Excellent information. Who knew there was an icon to capture a print-screen of any open application and insert it directly into PowerPoint?

Creatively, I pulled out of the freezer a quart of black bean soup that I made over the summer. I doctored it up with cumin and cilantro. It was delicious with corn tortilla chips!

Finally, I have gotten back to working on my practicum. This week I am off for Christmas vacation and will work on my learning agreement. Today, I have worked on finishing the bibliography, which has been a thorn in my side to get done, but will finally be done today (1 hour)! Five more articles to go . . .

Two weeks ago, my mentor and I finally have met and discussed my plan and process. We had an email meeting on Thursday as I sent her a really neat link to a TED's Talk by Salman Khan of Khan Academy fame (half hour). He uses the term "flipping the classroom" to turn the tables on how we provide education. He believes in using video lectures for students to view as homework, and traditional homework to be completed in the classroom where substantial help is available if a student gets stuck - either from the instructor or from student peers. I love this concept! What is remarkable is that fellow students become the teacher and at the same time develop super user skills - helping others master a new skill. Check it out here Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

Creatively, I made lots of candy and a cheesecake for Christmas. Cooking is not my forte per se, but I get spurts of wanting certain things to eat. It all started with wanting to make toffee and I made 3 batches. Only the first tasted good, but it still was not quite right. Oh well, I did it!  

Last month I made a concerted effort to join some groups on Linked-In. I found some great tips from a Captivate group and e-learning groups. Also, I have been trying to reach out more on the U-Cern site to see and connect with other organizations that provide computer training for student nurses. The feedback that I have been receiving from the clinical instructors is that our organization provides the most comprehensive computer training - especially when it comes to documenting medication administration. I am not sure if I should add this time to my practicum, so to be safe, I will not since most of that time researching was while working. 

Days and a few weeks have passed - finishing up my class and changes at work have put a hold on my practicum. It is time to get geared up again and get this done! Some of the barriers I have run into is an opportunity to apply for another position and of course school. Writing papers is so time consuming and my Apple laptop almost fried on me . . . the power cord started to melt at the connection. I caught it just in time and a new $80 cord fixed the issue. However, I ended up buying a spare computer so I will never be without access to the internet. So, I bought a desktop Apple - iMac. It is awesome! I installed Windows on it and it took me quite a bit of time to get it all loaded up with all my programs and settings. One more barrier - I took another Adobe class learning how to create flash files. Very cool stuff and so creative, too. But being out two more nights a week plus my painting class and homework every other night was killing me!

As for the position, I interviewed for the Cerner clinical analyst position in our IT department. This position will provide me with the skills to be a complete nursing informaticist and be a well rounded consultant later on in my career. I was pleased when the manager told me that her team unanimously voted for me to become a part of their team! Big sticking point is that the pay is less than what I am currently making. I made it quite clear that I would not take a penny less and that I feel I deserve an increase. But, I will take the same pay . . . but not less. That is for sure.

Another stumbling block was how busy my mentor and I have been. We lost contact for a bit due to her full time work and teaching nursing students. Too much for both of us this early winter. Now it is time to get back into the swing. I will need to adjust my timeline and update my practicum journal. 

A few updates - my eyes are much better since using the antibiotic drops at bedtime and I uploaded the Adobe master suite on the Mac on the Windows side. That is my creative part of life for now. I opened up my practicum files and restarted annotating my articles . . . back to my practicum now.

All day and night yesterday I worked on my cultural assessment presentation. I even woke at before 5 AM and started working on the last few slides. My paper to accompany this project was 2300 words - way too much writing for one day. My brain was too over stimulated. 

I had a difficult morning after attending a meeting - it is so hard when I have completely different viewpoint than some others. I really hope that making a change will help the frustration I feel. I then headed to one of the hospital campuses to conduct my boot camp class. Two nurses from the admission's team came and they really appreciated learning some quick tips.

After the class, I went to help one of the doctors and showed her how to manage her Outlook express. It was so funny when she wanted to clean out her inbox by dragging and dropping a whole bunch of emails at once. I told her I created another Liz Gaga "Little Monster." She loved it! Too funny!

Tonight I was supposed to go to ACCC for an Adobe Flash class - however, the catalog did not reflect that the instructor has pushed the class back by a day. Oh well - it starts on Wednesday. I was so tired anyway and came home and crashed in my chair yet again. I need some sleep.

Unfortunately, many days have gone by and it looks like my practicum has fallen apart. One, my mentor has not replied to a couple of my emails and second, I applied for another job. If I get the position as a clinical analyst, I will not be able to continue doing my learning agreement. This is probably the worst snag I have ever come across in my schooling. The only exception to that statement is when my dad passed away during statistics.May be I am exaggerating . . . I hope so.

I am excited about making a change though . . . my potential new boss mentioned that there is a person from a competing hospital that is going to be interviewed as well. Acquiring analyst build skills will make a huge difference in my resume and potential for becoming a consultant or working for Cerner. I only have 10 years left in my earning career. I need to do as much as possible to make the most money for the end of my working career.I would like to pay off my house.

School this week was a total confusion in doing a debate between two learning teams. The directions were all over the place, way too many posts!  I am behind by 100 posts - never have I been so behind! At least I met my obligations, but this was chaos.

This weekend I must create a PPT on a cultural assessment on a family. On Tuesday, I interviewed an Indian couple from the state of Gujarat. I learned so much from them! Wow, I wish American families were more influenced by their cultural values. 

Somewhere along the line, I found that ACCC is holding a 4 session class on Adobe Flash. I went ahead and bought the master collection so that I can actually create anything whether in print or on the web. This should be interesting. 

This was a busy weekend. I finished my schoolwork early on Saturday and handed everything in my 2PM. Dang - this weekend we get an extra hour and I did not need it! I did not work on my practicum at all and still need to reach out to my mentor. We have not connected in a couple weeks. 

Personal Stuff: I needed a weekend day to do 3 weeks of laundry, that actually led me to clean out my closet and get rid of so many clothes. I pared things down so that I have room in my closet. All my summer things now fit in my wardrobe, which will make switching things out next spring so much easier. Cooking today consisted of marinating a London broil and sauteing mushrooms, onions, and peppers. To round it out I made a baked potato - small amount of button and I am skipping the salt as much as possible, so I use lots of cracked pepper. Dinner was delicious. 

My eye is so much better - I feel slight pain when it is time to put in the eye drops. They have been a sight saver! My vision is so much clearer than it has been, so I am looking forward to fixing this for good.

Creatively, I read on the Delphi travel nurse site that next year for Halloween, everyone should dress up as an old fashioned nurse. I found a uniform store in Rhode Island that sells a white nurse's dress uniform and a nurse's cap. It is perfect! For $50, I have a great costume. I will be ready in 2012! I will need to find shoes though. 

Oh boy, I woke up with severe right eye pain at about 4 in the morning. I was able to get relief if my eyes were closed, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up, it was so red and painful that I took Motrin right away. As soon as I got to work, I called my optometrist office to see if I could get in to see the ophthalmologist - they had me come in right away. The doctor, who was very nice, put in numbing drops and told me that I have an infiltrated infection of the cornea, so uncomfortable and light sensitive. He feels I need to put strong antibiotic drops in my eye 4x a day for 2 weeks. Then I will need to use a low dose antibiotic drop for 2 months . . . this is a nasty chronic non-contagious eye infection. What fun . . .

Once I finished with the eye doctor, I stopped by AC Moore to pick up some carving tools for pumpkins for next year. I gathered up a nice selection of ribbon scrapers and xacto knives for more intricate designs. I might try carving a squash or a small pumpkin - maybe an apple! Hmm . . . that would be interesting. 

Back at work, I received a call that a patient disappeared from the chalkboard. It seems that whenever anyone does a change or any update in STAR to an actively admitted observation patient, they get kicked out of the system back into the undelivered hold section.  I had to ask our interface guy (long story there) to tell me what the transactions meant. Between him and the registration analyst, this is how I discovered what happened. I reached out to the interface guy at GE to see what is up with this.

One of the corporate educators stopped by and shared some angst she has been having with her office mates. That stinks but I can relate. I struggle at times with the same issues. She taught a class I had attended on Tuesday that did not seem to meet my expectations and she wanted to rectify that, but I understand the issues surrounding the residents concerns (see previous post). She just wanted a sympathetic ear.

By the end of this conversation, my eye was tearing and really hurting. I emailed my boss to tell her I was heading out to pick up my RX and would work later in the day once the eye pain stopped. It was not until about an hour ago that it subsided - 9:30 PM. 

I signed into class tonight and updated my learning team about my eye issue. I should be good to go by the AM. Tomorrow will be busy - my part of the debate opening statement and conclusion, plus the second DQ and class participation responses. Sunday, I am slating the day to finishing my bibliography. Three more weeks and this class will be done!

What the heck have I been doing these past two days? Whew . . . yesterday I was busy from the get-go. I received a call from the help desk from L&D staff saying that a patient was admitted to the recovery room, however, the fetal monitoring strip was not showing - for 5 hours. I could not hold it in - I reinforced the correct process which is to sign into the system to double check that the paper strip running matches what is seen on the PC monitor. Once again, they did not follow process. The issue was a GE setting on the workstations that our technicians and their system engineer needed to troubleshoot. We shall see how long these settings hold.

Then I wanted to just stay at the hospital, but the rest of our team needed to conduct a meeting in our travel space. I grabbed a small salad and headed back to my office. I am glad I did as I got some things accomplished. Hopefully, this weekend I can finish my bibliography and work on our web page - it needs a serious overhaul. I ended up staying until 6 PM to clean up my email and get things done. 

Once I got home, I fixed a plate of pork and sauerkraut - even better than the first night! Creatively - not much occurred yesterday - but I managed to talk to my children and my mom doing a very old fashioned thing - use the phone! We organized Thanksgiving and it is pretty much the same as all the previous years . . . at my sisters.

Today, I attended a 2-hour presentation on active listening and constructive feedback this morning. It was a repeat of content presented in the Foundations of Leadership course I did last year. I tried to learn how to handle the frustrated people that call about computer issues and are so distracted or just plain rude to us . . . and instead of an answer, I had a resident rudely tell me what "I should do . . . which is provide them in person help 24 hours 7 days a week.." Wow . . . he also tried to tell me that patients die because of the computer. I reminded him that during medical emergency and code calls they need to use the crash cart and not the computer. He also pointed out the 700 million dollars the organization made and that we could in fact afford Apple computers! He could not relate to us "less educated" people. Wow . . . I was a bit off put by his attitude, but it was a perfect example of what we go through. The corporate education instructor tried to be diplomatic, but that was impossible with this resident. He has his agenda and I had mine. This was perfect example of silence versus violence. Guess which one I used? Exactly!

For lunch, most of the team went to lunch at a local restaurant and I managed to get the car serviced nearby, too (rear brake light, and windshield wipers all fixed).  That feels good to have the car readied for winter. A coworker picked me up and then brought me back to pick up the car when it was done. We finally took down all the Halloween decorations, too. Lots happening today.

Tonight - I met my commitment for school , but I am so burnt on writing papers. Really done and now need some serious sleep.

Finally, our fix is installed on the GE fetal monitoring system and . . . we wait . . . of course, no observation patients have been admitted so far. Figures, as we are all checking and rechecking to see if it worked. I did my phone calling this morning to give a head's up to the staff about the change and they are to reach out to the help desk if the patient does not cross over into the correct bed. Non-stress test patients (since they changed the process) do not get picked up by the interface - it will remain a manual process. The only issue is if an NST is going to be admitted as an observation or admission, the patient needs to be put back into undelivered hold to be picked up correctly by the registration interface. This keeps the patient connected with the system no matter where they become admitted or transferred.

As for school, I must digest all the instructions for the project due on Sunday. We need to conduct a debate on how the environment positively affects a family's structure and function. This should prove interesting.

Creatively speaking, I received an blog update from Thom Khulman and he describes his mini training job aides as coursels. I think a more appropriate name is "info-morsels." This is copyrighted (by me) and I can already see little candies graphic links taking people to their appropriate training guide. He also stresses how important it is to develop training courses that are not automatic. The end user should drive the speed of the presentation. I agree and will try to start doing that. 

Update after class: Tonight I had to teach a class on the electronic medication reconciliation process - four people were originally signed up, one dropped the class and only two people showed. At least they were grateful because they learned some tips and tricks. I helped them customize their computer settings and create favorites to save them time . . . the ED nurse even said that it was worth the 45-minute ride to create her own PowerPlan. That made it worth it for me.

Today was an early day so that I could participate in a teleconference about correcting the interface issue. Last week we updated our fetal central monitoring and the outpatient types did pull the patient out of the hold unit and place the patient into a bed. This was challenging because four different systems were involved to make the one work. Our registration system (STAR) is different from our primary health information system (Cerner HIS) and from our fetal monitoring system (GE Centricity Perinatal). Then we have an interface engine called Cloverleaf. Now all these players had a chat this morning to try and figure out what was wrong . . . let me just say this . . . GE knew exactly what was wrong, but becasue they scheduled our update last week when key personnel were on vacation, we had to wait a week before the issue was corrected. I look forward to the day we are a partner with Cerner and will implement all their solutions. Then we can sundown the GE system!

What did I learn:

1. Check who is going to be on vacation - schedule around those "irreplaceable" people (system engineers & interface people on either side especially) 
2. Have plan B - we had a work around for the staff to do a manual transfer of the patient from the undelivered unit into a bed
3. Google anything - I cannot remember what the HL7 messages such as an AO11 means - dang - still can't remember at 1 AM - but I bookmarked them
4. Be direct and specific with all email and information provided while troubleshooting - keep things very simple and restate next steps
5. Make screenshots of everything and put that in with the request for change (RFC) paperwork - this just might help someone else or myself down the road

This took most of the day until we reconvened at 4 PM. Our interface specialist did not want us to put the fix into our production system then because if the "fix" breaks something else it is after hours and again - personnel will not be available. So, GE will be putting the fix in at 0800 today. My job is to notify the L&D unit and to ask them to check observations and admissions to see if the ADT interface is now working. Here's the rub - I am supposed to work tomorrow night teaching a medication reconciliation class form 6 to 9 PM. Another long day . . . 

So, back to schoolwork (I am so sick of writing papers - just thought I would share), I finally finished my paper and I think it is decent. We shall see what the instructor thinks when he posts our grades. That was my day . . . I don't think I can fit in much more. 

I do not think I did anything creative today . . . double dang!

Busy day today! I caught up on classmate postings and started my paper. I am more than half way done, but it is so hard for me to write any more . . . so sick of doing papers!

My time wasting consisted of doing some of my favorite Sunday day things . . .watching CBS Sunday Morning, cooking something in the crock pot, reading the NY Times online, checking out anything that seems interesting online. Today I explored some how-to You Tube videos on how to carve a pumpkin in 3-D. I think I can do it! I watched some Thai chefs create roses out of gourds and melons - so beautiful! Since I have studied roses for 20 years and painted them for 10, I think I can really do this. I need to acquire the proper tools and found some online. I also found a guy that does an extraordinary job of carving a face into a pumpkin. His name is John Argevine and he posted a series of videos demonstrating his techniques. So cool . . . next year I am going to go at it and just carve - skip the patterns!

Also, to feed the creative side, I checked out Rapid e-Learning blog and discovered some cool tips when using PowerPoint. I can save PowerPoint as a flash file and pull it into Captivate and all the animation is done! I want to test this and see how this pulls into our learning management system at the hospital. We use HealthStream, but have not purchased the SCORM file integration nor have we bought the new web application to build course content.  I think our e-learning would be better received if we stepped up our content and interactivity.

As for my practicum progress, I cannot read 15 articles and write the bibliography when I have to read 5 chapters, write a paper, do the DQ's, and post 2xday for 4 days out of the week. It is too much! I will need to pick away at it during the week, but at least I am exploring the e-learning resources on how to create the quizzing content using Captivate and PPT. I spent a half hour on that tonight. 

It is now a little after midnight and what a crazy weather day - trick & sleet day! Ice pelting the windows tonight while I cooked dinner. That was the extent of my artistic pursuits today - marinated salmon and with brown rice pilaf from scratch. Delicious and healthy. Later today, I should cook something that takes time - something in the crock pot maybe . . . pork & sauerkraut would be good on such a cold and windy weekend.

As for schoolwork, I spent the entire day on the computer working on my class deliverables and researching the family values paper that is due on Monday. I still need to write it, but the basics are done. I worked on a couple journal articles and our textbook to come up with the essence of my paper. Family health does impact society and across the world certain familial characteristics are found to be universal. Change theory, which is something we use at work in the nursing informatics world, also applies to families. Targeting the entire family for education effects change more rapidly than trying to educate only one person in the family. 

The learning team that I am assigned to is an alpha group for sure. I prefer it that way and all four of us are go-getters. One member is a bit too much as she is jumping the gun and not allowing the team to weigh in. I emailed the team my concerns and asked that we all have an opportunity to voice our opinion before anything is posted as a group assignment. Gratefully, one teammate responded immediately and agreed with me. I am not afraid to call people to the carpet and voice my opinion. 

A few weeks have passed since I lurked on the Delphi travel nurse message board and found a good post on Dr. Watson, an IBM physician online resource. There are some excellent articles about this application. Check them out - Dr. Watson even went up against the biggest Jeopardy champ.

It is 3:20 AM and I am awake. I have worked on the annotated bibliography for an hour - better than tossing and turning. So, why am I up at this hour? Because I came home exhausted. I fell sound asleep at 7:30 PM in my chair and I finally just went to bed at 9:45. At least I am being productive since I have so much to get done this weekend. My paper is due on Monday - I just barely started that - my 2nd discussion question, and 2 substantive responses. I would like to have this bibliography done as well. 

Yesterday was a catch-up day. I cleaned up email and explored U-Cern which is a Cerner based support and collaboration to manage and learn about the solutions we use in the hospital. I customized my home page there and added a few widgets so that I can create links to areas that I like to explore, such as references pages.

Also, I attended a meeting for mentors and proteges held by our corporate education department. I have been working with a young man that works on our help desk as he wants to move up in our organization. He excels in communicating and wants to teach in some capacity. We have been working together for about four months and it was going well but we seemed to have hit a wall. He was able to see me work in most of my areas of responsibility, but I think he would like to work with my teammates to learn their different roles. Truly, I wish we had been offered this class in the beginning so that we had clearly defined goals. We had a very good chat after this meeting and I encouraged this protege to plan on expanding his education, at the very least he should spend some of his tuition reimbursement on some classes.  

I will start tonight with yesterday's doings. We discovered that parts of the interface to our central fetal monitoring are not working correctly. Admitted patients pick up the patient correctly and admit the patient to the correct room. Outpatients, however, do not get picked up. The staff must manually do this and this leaves lots of room for error. What a challenge to get all the right people to the table to figure this out. The engineer from our organization is on vacation. The interface specialist from the vendor is on vacation. It looks like we will not be able to get everyone together until Monday afternoon. 


Today, was our department's Halloween extravaganza. It was really fun and our team did a great job. I spent hours last night and this morning carving a pumpkin. Next year, I will opt for a more simple design as it shows better in daylight. Here is a warning - fog machines do trigger the fire alarm and the firemen will come. We have some photos as proof!

Tonight, I needed to participate in my family dynamics class. The requirements are to post my answer to the discussion question and respond to at least two discussions. I also got a jump on tomorrow's responses; I can save them as drafts and post tomorrow to receive attendance credit. Saturday the second discussion question is due. Monday, I have  a 1000-word paper due on family values. This is not my favorite topic but I will need to pull out the creativity in order to make it more interesting.  

I am going to read another article to keep working on my annotated bibliography - at least get in a half hour. 

Today was a very long day . . . we started at 0645 on the OB unit doing a central monitoring update. Bringing the system down and pushing out the update was the easy part. The portable monitors proved challenging because of the various settings that seem to become fouled whenever the PC needs a break/fix repair. The ADT (Admission/Discharge/Transfer) interface also stopped working. The vendor needed to adjust a script on their side (the receiving end) and this took all day. About 4 PM, the system was completely up and functioning as designed. 

Of course I did not sleep well in anticipation of all this. Once I got home, I needed to organize all my screenshots of the system validation testing and submit this document along with the email trail of issues we encountered. This turned into a 20-page document. Once I sent this into the clinical analyst department, I signed off the progress to my boss. 

With the clock ticking past 6:00 PM, I checked into my next class at U of Phx - Dynamics of Family Systems. I met the requirements for day one and then worked on my practicum. I read two articles tonight and updated the annotated bibliography (1 hour). Now, I am making sure I blog my progress, as this will be so beneficial to meeting my timeline and keeping track of my time.

If I can stay awake, I will start my weekly discussion questions for my class, one is due on Thursday. Tomorrow night I must carve a pumpkin for a contest at work . . . got to have some fun!

Last night I discovered how to share my entire folder of documents for my practicum with my mentor through Dropbox. It worked! She signed up and has an account - there are many documents to review, but I assigned one folder specifically designated for her. 

Today was a personal day with family to recharge. This will be a very busy week with a computer system upgrade that I am responsible for, plus starting another 5-week class on Tuesday. It is called dynamics of family systems and should be similar to life cycles of computer systems. I signed into the class and downloaded all my materials and started outlining my text book. I will have a paper due next weekend and need to write my bibliography. Busy, busy week.

Last night I watched a Cerner Health Conference video that was presented last year on an academic EHR - Academic Education Solution (AES) that Cerner provides to nursing colleges  for a cost (grants are available to fund this solution). What I found most valuable from this presentation is the design structure of the basic PowerChart components of what I teach to the students. I will model my practicum to follow some of those designs. 


However, there was no mention of the resources available for help with critical thinking skills, such as the resource links embedded in PowerChart. To me, this is the beauty of an EHR, such as PowerChart. The information system is customizable to add links to provide resources right at the patient's bedside. I believe if the students learn from the beginning how to conduct a search using the workstation-based learning supports, they learn to practice evidence-based nursing care. Over time, I believe it is logical that patient care outcomes should improve with improved navigational skills of the nursing staff. This would make a decent research study hypothesis!


For example, if a student receives report on a patient who has a disease process that they have never heard of or they are not familiar with the etiology, they have the ability to research this disease using a variety of embedded tools. 

• Up-to-Date is one resource that is phenomenal; using this tool is similar to searching in a brick and mortar library. 
• Micromedex is a drug search database and an excellent tool to check on IV drug compatibilities, contraindications, etc. 
• The homegrown link we use - Resources/Forms for Printing - is invaluable and designed to save time. Every resource is compiled here for easy access plus links to documents that are frequently printed for the patient. (Example: Advance directive in English and Spanish). This also links into our computer job aides for additional application functionality help.
• Medical Calculators - great tool for critical care areas
• Pathways and protocol site - another homegrown site designed by a multidisciplinary committee for the DRG's to locate the pathways easily

My plan is to teach the navigation of these embedded tools to the nursing students via an audio-graphic presentation using WebEx. This will allow me to reuse this teachable moment for future classes as well as a provide a resource for a just-in-time refresher. That is the heart of my practicum and I hope to demonstrate this journey through this blog!

Innovative ideas

As a member of our IT department's fledgling innovation team, I watch for interesting ideas that can be modeled into the health care arena. Analogous thinking produces innovative uses from one industry to another.

Today on MSNBC, there is an article (right click on links and choose Open in New Tab or Open in New Window) about how many parents research a child's illness prior to going to an ED. I feel new employees or student nurses can apply this increasingly common research technique, as they need to learn on the fly, and who will be doing their clinical rotations at our organization. I want to create and provide those very important resources for their review before AND after orientation. People that possess a certain level of curiosity want to investigate unknown variables prior to exposure to stressful situations. Knowing information ahead of time reduces the stress of new experiences. Making analogies for understanding new concepts is what I want to inspire in our new student nurses. 

Also, I plan to use Dropbox to share my practicum progress with my mentor. As I update the folder on my computer, it automatically updates in Dropbox and notifies my mentor with sharing rights that she has a new file to review. This great and free application is simple to use when sharing files. It removes multiple steps when sending files or folders for people to review. 

This past week, I spent a significant amount of time exploring Tom Kuhlman's blog on elearning. What a great guy and I love his very helpful tips. More importantly - I love his name! I wonder if it is his stage name? Hmm . . . 


So, I "waste" time each day exploring certain subjects that provide me with creative ideas that hopefully, will lead to innovative ideas, too. I explored an artist's website today  - Peter Fiore - and found a week-long seminar he is teaching next summer in the Hudson River Valley.His color use is phenomenal. I am really excited about this, as he teaches oil painting based on “plein air photography” with studio painting. Oils are his medium and he uses anything for a paintbrush including palette knives. This artistic quest forces me to open myself to new ways of analyzing any detail . . . and see objects in a different light or to consider the complementary side, too.

Nursing Practicum Progress

Finally, I am nearing the end of my journey (approximately 30 classes since 2005) to obtain my masters in nursing informatics from the University of Phoenix. Part of the requirement is to complete a practicum and I want to record my progress with this assignment. I just finished the initial 3 week course; my instructor was the same one that I had for a class in my BSN journey. She received her DNP in the interim - it is amazing how an education is built over time and with defined goals. That is exactly what I need to do for my project.


My project is to investigate a method to improve how to deliver education to nursing students on how to navigate the electronic medical record (EMR) and use the embedded tools. I want to use a more innovative approach to supplement the education we currently provide. I will use a blended method of e-learning plus classroom time to teach basic functionality (scheduled time in the PC lab to practice). 

As I progress over this 6-9 month project, I will report in to an APN who also works in our critical care unit as well as teach nursing students. She is an awesome teacher and I am so glad she will work with me this year. When I am ready to submit my project journal, I will attend Part B of the course for the final 2 weeks of this capstone course.  


So, my first week of work is to conduct a literature review and I need to get started. Once I have created an annotated bibliography, I will schedule time to discuss the findings with my mentor.