Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Nursing School - the Time to Hone Patient Teaching Skills

Published
by
admin
on March 16, 2010
in Nursing Education
. 0 Comments

i_nurse_female_2It’s ironic. During nursing school, it seems as if you have the most on your plate with the least time to accomplish it in. Yet nursing school is by far the best time to cram your eager, curious mind with as much information and as many clinical experiences as you can without completely losing your mind in the process.

One of the most important skills you can learn while still in the fertile, academic resource rich ground of nursing schools is patient teaching. Think about it – you have a school library, daily educational experiences and a school full of nursing instructors to learn from. And in your clinical rotations, you most likely have only two or three patients. This is the perfect time to learn how to accurately, compassionately and genuinely convey medical information to the layperson.

Believe me, once you graduate and are juggling about three times as many patients, you had better have a grasp on your patient teaching skills. As a nurse you will be expected to provide discharge instructions, pre-op and post-op teaching in addition to all the times physicians bring you into patient rooms to be on hand for some last minute “new diagnosis” teaching.

Once the physician leaves the room, you need to be prepared to handle the barrage of questions (and emotion) from patients and their family about what the physician just told them.

During nursing school, seek out community teaching opportunities outside of school. This could mean contacting local community centers, senior living facilities, churches or schools and offering your services as a student nurse educator. Even as a student, you have a wealth of valuable health information about common conditions and risk factors such as high blood pressure, stroke prevention, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and more.

Most community organizations will welcome your services, whether in a group or one-on-one setting and in the process, you are gaining invaluable “extra credit” in the patient teaching, public health and community aspects of your nursing education.

Nurse’s Role in Prescriptions

Published
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on March 9, 2010
in Nursing Education
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i_pharmacist_femleI remember learning as a nursing student, that if a physician makes an error in prescribing a medication (name, dosage… handwriting) and a nurse administers that medication to the patient, the nurse is held responsible for the error. The math just did not add up.  Physicians have to go to school for at least six years before they can prescribe meds and their total education is closer to twelve.

My BSN program, when all was said in done came out to about four and a half years (with required summer courses). A BSN program typically includes a massive amount of pharmacology and medication training as reflected by all the medication questions on the NCLEX licensing exam. But, I still was left wondering how nurses are supposed to be able to spot a medication error unless we know everything that the prescribing doctor knows about meds.

I soon learned, once on the floor, that the best ways to avoid a problem are to have a current drug reference on hand and to always, always, always ask the doctor if you have any questions or doubts.  As a night shift nurse this took a bit of courage to wake up a physician at three in the morning – but it sure beats being named in a malpractice lawsuit and even more importantly risking a human life.

As reported by the May 5th Oregonian, there is apparently some controversy brewing in Oregon, where the state legislature is debating whether psychologists, who lack the same amount of training as physicians, should be allowed to prescribe “the most dangerous and lethal pharmaceuticals” to patients. The bill does include certain restrictions regarding psychotropic medications (ex. antidepressants, anti-psychotics).

I should note that physicians are not the only one authorized to prescribe medications. This privilege also is extended to doctors of osteopathy, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Psychologists in America, at this point, do not have universal prescribing privileges – only some are given permission to dole out the meds.

In the meantime, Oregon House Bill 2702, according to recent reporting, is currently stalled in the Oregon house pending review of a medical task force later this year.