Staff Development Newsletter
Quinsigamond Community College
New Editor: Erica Merrill
Layout & Design: Erica Merrill
This month's issue:
By: Karen Green
"Clinicians and Educators: Partners in Developing Tomorrow's Nurses"
By: Allison Shields, et. al
I
had been ferreting around for months, searching for some profound or insightful
way to not only introduce myself as the new editor of VISIONS,
but to also reintroduce VISIONS,
itself, as a continuing vehicle of professional development. I will admit that each of my many attempts failed miserably
as not one of my ideas ever seemed to pan-out or escape my despairing and
debilitating streaks of “morbid creativity,” “inappropriate humor,”
“self-deprecation,” “muse syndrome,” “publication phobia,” and not
to mention “Harry Potter mania.”
I
ultimately found my inspiration, however, in one of the most unlikely places –
my 2004 “Motivations” calendar.
Today,
September 16, 2004, it finally dawned on me that my office calendar was still
posted on June. All summer, I
enjoyed sneaking covetous glances at June’s “Teamwork” heading and its
picture of two sleek and shiny dolphins simultaneously leaping out of the murky
depths of the endless, shimmering ocean, their snouts aimed high for a great,
gulping breath of fresh, open air, their powerful tailfins streaming with
droplets of seawater glinting in the setting sun.
All summer, I read and reread the statement printed below this picture:
“As a team we have the courage to make amazing leaps.”
These words never quite penetrated my brain, and, apparently, neither did
the fact that according to my calendar, it was June for an extra 2 ˝ months.
In fact, I still can’t decide whether I left my calendar stuck at June
because I was in denial that the summer was all too quickly passing me by or if
I just preferred the picture of June’s dolphins to July’s vast and empty
desert and August’s bored-looking lion.
Today,
however, I finally realized that, like it or not, I had better turn my calendar
to September before someone notices, and when I did, I was pleased to see
another pretty picture (redwoods shrouded in a misty silence) but also elated to
read the heading and caption: “Vision – By staying rooted in our commitment,
today’s vision becomes tomorrow’s reality.”
After reading these words, I was immediately reminded of a particular
statement made by our most recent All College Day speaker, Thomas Brown:
“Vision provides a bridge between where we are today and where we want to
be.”
Vision:
in my mind, it is not just the ability to imagine something out of nothing, to
see – lurking just below the surface, waiting to be discovered – what others
may not be able to see; it is also the determination to act on an idea, to
build, revise, and renew it, to see it through until the very end and then take
a step back and say, “We did that, we created it, we made it happen, we got it
to work, we helped ourselves to go beyond, to realize that the sky is not even
the limit, and now we are poised to help so many others seek their dreams,
attain their goals – reach for the sky.”
By: Karen Green, Financial Aid Counselor
In
February, I attended the 2004 College Board Tax Workshop.
The purpose of this workshop was to give a more in depth training on how
to read tax returns and how to appropriately use them during the file review
portion of the financial aid process.
The
presenters, James Briggs and Frank Resnick, were both entertaining and
knowledgeable. They discussed the
basic elements of a tax return first, such as filing status, exemptions, income,
and adjustments to income. They
pointed out a few easy ways to tell if a tax return may be fraudulent, such as
if the filing status was missing entirely.
Then, we went through several in-depth case studies trying to pick out
relevant items that may affect a student’s eligibility for financial aid.
For example, we dealt with tax documents showing trusts where the student
was the beneficiary. We learned the
different types and components of trusts. For
example, a Simple Trust requires the annual distribution of income to the
beneficiaries, while a Complex Trust allows the trustee to retain or distribute
the income annually at their discretion. We also encountered tax returns showing capital gains from
the sale of a house that were then used to purchase a new home.
This is relevant to determining a student’s aid eligibility because the
FAFSA takes this income into consideration because of its inclusion on the tax
return; however we may use our judgment as professionals to ignore this income,
as it is not, in reality, available to the student or parent for use.
My primary reason for attending was to become more familiar with the tax returns of those who are self-employed. More than one case study dealt with this issue. I learned many things, one of which was regarding the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System that allows depreciation for an item bought in a previous year to be carried through for a set number of years. A detailed depreciation report would list the items being depreciated and allow a financial aid professional to determine if the value of the business that the parent reported on the FAFSA makes sense with the assets that we see.
The workshop was very informative. Given the attendance of several different types of institutions, the discussion that resulted was both lively and insightful.
A Nurse Educators Conference
By: Allison Shields; Ellen Andrews; Carol Bosworth; Patricia Creelman; Barbara Dunn; Junea Hutchins; Jane June; Marka Larrabee; Peg McGrath; Paula Moreau; Jean Nicholas; Kathy Rozanski; and Suzanne Sullivan
The
Director of Nurse Education and 12 full-time nursing faculty members attended
the 12th Annual Conference for Nurse Educators in Practice Settings
and Schools of Nursing on May 24, 25 and 26, 2004.
The three-day conference was held at Wentworth-by-the-Sea.
The hotel and conference center is located in New Castle, NH, and is
positioned high atop a bluff overlooking the cool and relaxing waters of the
Atlantic Ocean. The location with
its panoramic views of the lush ocean scenery offers a therapeutic and relaxing
atmosphere for conference participants to recharge their personal and
professional batteries, reenergize their minds through creative participation
and sharing while restoring their spirits by reconnecting with old friends and
colleagues.
The
pre-conference opened on Monday morning with a presentation given by Sharon Cox,
MSN, CNAA, a motivational speaker who presented a program entitled, “Teamwork
Toolkit: Tips, Tools and Techniques.”
The central message to the 200 Nurse Educators in attendance was: “the
delivery of healthcare has changed and thus, the way we teach future nurses to
deliver care must change.” Current
trends in healthcare indicate that safe and prudent healthcare is dependent on a
team of providers working together and that the concept of team must be taught
and modeled in nursing education to provide future nurses with the “toolkit”
to be a safe and satisfied practitioner.
During
the first half of her program, Cox emphasized the culture changes that have
occurred in healthcare and how those changes have led to the necessity of
collaborative work environments.
The
second half of Cox’s program began with a description of Patrick Lencioni’s
“Model for Team Building.” The
conceptual model is a 5 tier pyramid, with building trust at the base, moving
upward through the tiers of managing conflict, making a commitment, embracing
accountability and ending
at the top with results: evaluating team performance.
Lencioni
believes building trust is the essential element and provides the foundation on
which a team is built. He suggests
that the environment in which trust is best built is one in which participants
are honest, candid, and open and ask for help – without fear of reprisal.
The
second tier of the pyramid, conflict resolution, focuses on understanding
typical conflict cycles in an effort to shift the culture from “us and them”
to “we,” where talking out the differences replaces acting out the
differences. The key to managing
conflict productively lies in the team recognizing difficult and destructive
behaviors and addressing those behaviors by using healthy approaches to foster
open communication.
Commitment,
the third tier, is central to establishing and committing to the team goals.
Cox cited that commitment is achieved through the establishment of ground
rules for meetings that foster behaviors leading to open communication among
team members.
The
fourth tier addressed the need for team accountability, which includes the
identification of responsibility and each team member’s willingness to answer
for results after the fact, to follow through and follow up.
The
last and top tier, evaluating results, is essentially the team’s “report
card.” Cox emphasized that the
achievement of the team’s goals should be done utilizing the skill set from
the other tiers in the pyramid to ensure a culture change that is built on
concepts of hierarchy.
Day
two of the conference began with a presentation by the previous day’s speaker
Sharon Cox, MSN, CNAA. Her presentation was entitled, “Imagine the Possibilities,” which began with the
re-enforcement of the main points of the previous day’s program and concluded
with positive suggestions for dealing with the changes that we, as nurse
educators, practicing nurses and co-workers must make if we are to survive and
thrive in today’s health care arena. She
encouraged the use of techniques such as mind mapping, appreciative inquiry, and
reflective practice to visualize the work that needs to be done, and how to
achieve as well as how to evaluate results.
Her
main points were to: stop the parent-child relationships in the work
environment; lose the victim entitlement mentality; seek out positive people;
energize oneself and the profession by moving from an orientation that is
reactive to proactive; laugh; have time to reflect; spend time with people who
nourish, and most importantly; choose to be happy and productive by changing
one’s own attitude and responses from negative to positive.
Cox’s
keynote address was followed by a presentation, entitled “Teaching
and Evaluating Professionalism,” given by Kathleen Gaberson, PhD, RN,
CNOR. Gaberson discussed the
definitions of professionalism, the attributes of a professional and the
benefits of belonging to a professional organization. She stated that as nursing educators, the concept of
professionalism must be modeled by the educator for the student, and delivered
throughout the curriculum regardless of what level of education one teaches.
Three
plenary sessions were then offered and conference participants could attend the
session of their choosing.
The first session, “Conducting Effective Post-Test Discussions: A Learning Experience, Not A Free-for-All,” was delivered by Kathleen Gaberson, PhD, RN, CNOR. The speaker emphasized that a formal exam review is a critical and valuable teaching aid for students that must be incorporated into all educational curriculums. As an educator, Gaberson believes that the faculty have a responsibility to ensure the students have opportunities to explore why answers to test questions are right and wrong as a means of clarification, and that students have a responsibility to seek clarification until they understand the content presented. The critical points related to post-test reviews are:
 | Faculty
feedback reinforces the student’s understanding of critical information
selected for testing |
| Student
feedback assists faculty in meaningful test construction |
| Faculty
feedback related to answer rationales must be delivered in a positive,
non-defensive manner to maximize student understanding |
| Positive
test review sessions require: |
| Faculty
preparation |
| Proctor
test security |
| Control
of the session |
| Use of feed-back related to finding an invalid question and changing test scores |
The
second program choice was a presentation entitled “Lights,
Camera, Action: Incorporating Readers Theater into the Classroom,”
presented by Karen Pardue, MS, RN, BC. This
session was an exciting and dynamic demonstration of how one may incorporate a
dramatic reading into the classroom. Pardue
emphasized the student preparation that is needed in order for this type of
learning experience to be successful includes: learning objectives to be
achieved; a review of the play/script; selection of the cast of readers; one
rehearsal and; formulation of discussion questions to be used following the
presentation.
The
third program choice, “Partnering a Well Prepared Nursing Workforce,” presented by
Joan Culley, RN, CWOCN, MS, MPH, discussed the shortage of nurses and nurse
educators as it related to the need to develop partnership models as a means to
solving this current health care crisis.
The
program concluded by reassembling all program participants for a presentation by
Angela McBride, PhD, RN, FAAN. McBride’s
presentation was entitled, “Mentoring:
Welcoming and Enabling New Faculty and Clinical Professionals.”
She eloquently discussed the stages and benefits of mentoring young
professionals as one solution to the shortage of Nurse Educators and
Practitioners.
The
third day of the Nurse Educator Conference began with “The
Future of Nursing – Funding and Education.”
The presentation was given by Barbara Blakeney, MS, APRN, BC, ANP, and
the theme was nursing’s agenda for the future, the business of educating
students and the business of the profession: the need for nurses to come
together in support of governmental funding for basic and advance nursing
education. Her charge to the nurse educators in the audience was to
place emphasis on building curriculum that keeps pace with current-day trends,
incorporating new technology into teaching methodologies and to teach the future
nurses to value themselves, each other and their work so the profession of
nursing can advance. As educators,
she believes we must recognize and understand the value and differences of the
“practice of nursing” and the “work of the profession,” and that there
is critical work to be done in both areas.
Blakeney
stated her belief that nursing is a profession that comes with the
responsibility to fight for its future, and to seek money from congress to
support the education of nurses in the same way they support the education of
medical doctors. Today’s practice
mandates that, like physicians, nursing students need nurse internships and
residency programs to adequately prepare the new graduate to safely and
effectively enter nursing practice. She stated the biggest national challenge is that all nurses
must come together through their professional organizations to support the
amount of money congress can truly give.
Recruitment
and retention are key elements that must be addressed if professional nursing is
to survive. In the realm of recruitment, Blakeney emphasized that all
nurses need to build a business case for nursing practice and the services that
are rendered within. Nursing must
also pay attention and change the issues that lead to the retention of
practicing nurses. Implementing
methods to address the retention issues, such as the ANA program “Handle with
Care,” offers a pro-active solution.
Blakeney
concluded by emphasizing the need to belong to professional organizations; as
educators we need to begin that practice by involving future nurses in the
National Student Nurse Organization. Nurses
need to join together through membership in our professional organizations if
the profession is to survive and move forward!
The
conference participants were then offered attendance at one of three session
choices.
The first choice, “Orchestrating a Career,” was a program presented by Angela McBride, PhD, RN, FAAN. This presentation considered various stages and characteristics of a professional career and was organized around three essential questions:
McBride
notes that a career is an evolving and life-long process that involves
predictable stages and transitions. She
draws on the following terminology to describe career transitions: Preparation;
Independent Contributions; Program Development; Development of a Field and; the
Gadfly Period. According to this
view, moving through the stages of a career involves an interactive and dynamic
process in which the individual, over time and through increasing levels of
responsibility, is able to effect changes in the environment, and is
simultaneously changed oneself by that work.
Each successive career transition requires that the individual master
various roles, central activities, and engage in major career themes appropriate
for that particular career stage.
The second seminar choice, “The Skinny on Evaluation Tools: Why Must They Be So Big,” presented by Joan Clites, EdD, RNC, offered the following essential points:
·
The clinical evaluation process has been a standard since 1785.
The methods of evaluation have ranged from pass/fail to grading back to
pass/fail. Research has
demonstrated the pass/fail method is the most widely accepted method of clinical
evaluation by nursing faculty. Clinical
faculty should conduct an annual review of the evaluation tool to ensure it
reflects current expectations of practice.
·
Review the clinical tool and evaluation process with students upon
initial entry into the clinical setting, at midterm and close to the end of the
clinical rotation. This helps the student to understand that the
evaluation of their performance (attainment of the clinical objectives) is based
on data collected during the entire clinical experience.
·
Clinical site evaluations should be performed annually and compared
against the published clinical objectives to ensure student experience
availability.
·
Provide back-to-back clinical experiences for consistency and student
follow-through.
·
Provide clinical preceptorship experiences for last semester students
through academic-service partnerships to assist students to gain skills
necessary for a smooth transition from school to work.
(Increase interaction with staff, role definition, value in health care
delivery process, shared competencies and skills, time management, critical
thinking, care planning, teamwork, policy development, life-long learning,
etc.). This type of clinical
learning experience provides for a learning continuum of care, resource sharing,
strategic planning for both partners and shared competencies and skills, and
provides the practitioner with an opportunity to be an active, engaged member of
his/her specialty.
·
There are many evaluation methods used under the umbrella of the
pass/fail grading system. Widely
accepted methods include:
o
The tool itself
o
Faculty
anecdotal notes
o
Faculty observation/walking rounds
o
Standardized patient experiences with meaningful care planning
o
Reflective
practices/self-assessment done
by student and discussed with clinical educator
o
Pre- and post-conference student performance
o
Clinical simulated situations
o
Clinical games
o
Media clips with written assignment
o
Written clinical examination
o
Comprehensive clinical skill examination
o
Student
portfolios to assess clinical
competence
·
Research indicates failing students is the most problematic
responsibility clinical faculty experienced.
In
closing, the speaker stated, “It is our duty to recognize incompetent nursing
care, act on it, and, if necessary, fail the student.” Grading needs to
be consistent and standardized. Avoid vagueness when spelling out
behaviors that lead to failure and hold the student to a high standard.
And most importantly, do not live in fear of litigation; clear and
concise documentation of student performance, remediation, warning and outcomes
are key factors in defending a student’s grade.
The
third program choice, “Story Telling: A Leadership Tool,” began with an immediate
intricate weaving of stories as Carolyn Smeltzer, EdD, RN, FAAN, narrated rich
stories of nurses to demonstrate the importance and influence that storytelling
can make. Her message was simple:
“Storytelling is a powerful tool that can be used to influence others.
A leader’s role is to influence. Storytelling
empowers trust, builds relationships, shapes culture, and assists both leaders
and staff in reaching strategic goals of an institution.”
What
a valuable lesson for nursing faculty as we encounter students who are just
beginning their careers. Students
could benefit from the enriching, unique and powerful stories of the nursing
faculty and faculty could receive the same benefit from the diverse student
population that we serve. By
listening and gathering stories, nurses can reflect on their own practice, and
learn lessons from other nurses as well as from their patients.