Module 3

What sort of teaching is done in your nursing role? Is there any nursing role that does not involve teaching in some manner?

Multiple teaching opportunities exist at my job. I use videos, documents, and websites to facilitate my teaching of my parents/clients. My teaching is done face to face to acknowledge that the parent understands their problem.

There is NO nursing role that does not involve teaching!!!

Module 4-Decision support for care delivery

In the article, “Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases”, Tversky and Kahneman state that “people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasted of accusing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations”. I had assumed that this was not the case with me, which I would be able to use probabilities to come to a more accurate conclusion. But upon doing the examples provided in the article I came to the same conclusion, as did the greater public. I was disappointed but it made me think. I learned that instead of putting a “respiratory patient” into the usual criteria of respiratory patients I should see this patient as an individual and look for symptoms outside of the normal assessment. Employing this would lead to better assessment. Employing this would lead to better assessment skills. Also when I look at sample sizes I will ignore the smaller sample size and rely on my statistical training to help determine if an intervention is truly making a difference.

The article “Clinical Decision Support Systems in Nursing” by J.Anderson and P.Wilson brought to light the issue of CDSS (clinical decision support systems) and CPG (clinical practice guidelines) and using both to further the evidence based clinical decision-making. I have used CPG in my own work and most colleagues rely on this system when they are unsure of a correct method for a procedure. Adding CDSS’s would enhance the decision-making and practical aspects of patient care.

An overall change has occurred with my feelings towards CDSS’s. At first I wondered what the point was of another decision-making tool. The evidence was overwhelmingly in favor of the CDSS’s and adding it to the CPG processes this showed the greatest improvement of patient outcomes.

Module 2

I used PubMed,Endnote, and Google to retrieve information about my clinical problem. Of the sites above I liked the ease of use with the retrieval of information with EndNote but the all over ease of use of Google. Who does not like Google? I Google everything!!! Anything that I do not know an answer to I will first Google! Thought a draw back with Google is that you have to sift through so much information. You also have to determine if that information is from a reputable site.
For some reason EndNote had trouble connecting to PubMed which was hard because a lot of my references were found on PubMed. But where would we be if everything worked perfectly? Not screaming at my computer and turning it off and on again and downloading the program at least twice and then finding it to delete it again!! Oh how I love technology.
I really liked using NGC website. It was easy to use and very straight forward. I was able to put my syndrome in and find quite a few relevant searches within a few minutes! I have never used this searching site before and I have come to really like it and will probably use it in the future. It also allowed you to use MeSH just like PubMed, this allowed you to do a more detailed search.