Module 4: Teaching it up!

What sort of teaching is done in your professional role?

I am required to not only teach patients, but I also help train my coworkers in everything from wound care dressings to Medicare paperwork.

I work most of the time in our agency's office organizing patient intake, writing and taking orders, receiving lab results, communicating with the many doctors and medical staff that share our mutual patients, and auditing charts. During my office time, I am also expected to help the field staff understand which paperwork is needed for their patients, and how to correctly fill in that paperwork. It is important that I not only teach my coworkers what they need, but how to recognize and/or anticipate that need for the next time.

I am also available to ride with our nurses in order to help them do a procedure that they might be unsure of, and need some further instruction with.

Lastly. I am required as part of my nursing care to be constantly teaching my patients about their medications, treatments, illnesses, and their cable bill. :)

Whatever I am teaching, I am always on the lookout for new resources, like this one, provided by our informatics instructor.


 Is there any nursing/health care provider role that does not involve teaching in some manner?

I highly doubt it. Maybe if you were taking care of a patient in a coma on a deserted island, and there was no one else there for you to teach. But then you could still teach yourself new things. No, I don't believe that there is a nursing role that does not involve teaching in some manner.

Module 2: My love affair with Agency Butler

I find this blog assignment very applicable! Right now my work is instituting a new electronic charting system. It's called Agency Butler. Sometimes I like to call it "Agency Butt-head." I know that that is slightly inappropriate, but being a brand new system it has it's issues.

Right now we are in the evaluating/implementing phase. Things are going...okay. Here is how I am involved in the process. I work with patient intake, and we use the system to begin the patient's charts. Here is what I don't enjoy about it: If I take too long entering the demographics, it kicks me out without warning, and without saving my work. That is when I call it Agency Butt-head. I will admit that it is handy because it is web based, and I can access it from my phone. This comes in handy when one is on call and has no background information on the patient they are going to see. I can just pull out my phone and look up their chart.

I've also been helping our field clinicians start to use the new tablets and program...they aren't loving the switch, but we have weekly meetings where people can express their frustrations to the Agency Butler team, and usually they are taken care of. We began with a pilot team of clinicians to start using the system. I feel like this has been very useful because they can help us work out all of the kinks before it goes to the rest of the clinicians.

Module 1

Hey Everyone (all two of you who might look at this) :)

How about a fun fact to get us started. I was named after a character on the soap opera, The Young and the Restless. My parents fought over Dixie or Vicki, but the Young and the Restless prevailed, and here I am today!

I am currently enrolled in the Masters of Teaching Nursing program. While I'm not composing blog posts, I spend roughly 40-50 hours a week working as a home health and hospice RN for Millcreek Home Health & Hospice. I love it! There is one thing that you can always count on in my job, and it's that you NEVER know what to expect when you open the door to your patient's home. Our patient population is primarily elderly. I often say, "I'm yelderly about the elderly." I don't think that it actually means anything, but what I mean by yelderly, is that I love them!

As a graduate level nurse, I need to know about information management, because everything is digital these days. I'm amazed by how things have changed since the last time I was in school only four years ago. These changes are exciting, but I must admit, they are a bit overwhelming as well. I'm hoping this class will help me understand how I can use IT in my practice as a teacher and a RN.

Working in the community, we use information quite a bit. I currently am responsible for helping all of my patients sign up for a program that allows registered providers access to their pharmacy records, hospital records, and MD visit notes. This is extremely important for viewing the entire clinical picture of the patients we treat.
Our company also has an online charting system that is just being put into place. This makes charting information in real time that much more easy, it also makes information readily available for all clinicians involved in the patient's care.