The Clinical Environment
I will be teaching nursing students in a clinical setting, so most of the environment is out of my control. What I can do is control the pre- and post-clincal conferences and keep the discussions reined in and focused on our learning objectives for the day.
I also work in a clinical setting! We use one of the "classrooms". But we only have a very tiny white board and some chairs. So when it comes time to hold "presentations" during post-conference, we will have to be pretty creative since there is no audio-visual equipment. TIme to go back to the old days of poster boards and markers!! I would like to go back to the school for post-conferences where there are more supplies and a better learning environment. But I was told we aren't allowed to leave the facility! I'm sure we can make it work though!
Crystal--it is indeed frustrating to not have the right space for pre and post conferences. The best that we can do is to make friends of the staff, connect our students to the significant staff and get suggestions from them as the times approach for our meetings. As both a clinical nurse and an instructor, I know that a high level of collaboration will benefit students and help you see things that need to be changed in your students. For instance, in psych nursing it is so easy for student RN's to spend their time with those with no RN training--this improves a lot when the instructor takes time to cultivate the RN's. The same has worked with meeting rooms, RN's seems to unleash their creativity and helping nature when they are acknowledged and encouraged.
I am always afraid of using the cafeteria, due to the fact, although we do not use names we could be overheard. My students are in the operating room, so describing cases is too close for comfort for me.
One of my sights is a teaching hospital, I do not understand why they do not have a classroom available, there are many students there on a daily basis. One would think they would provide a comfortable environment. After all the hospitals will benefit from graduating students.
I am a Nursing instructor and at our hospital, we have had to go to the cafeteria to hold post conferences. Our normal post-conference room had a major water leak and we are no able to use it at this time. We've had to do the same thing - not use patient names or room numbers. It has been a real challenge holding post-conference in the cafeteria due to the noise level.
We are unable to use the floor's break room for post-conference that we use for pre-conference due to the staff eating lunch.
I am hoping the room that we were using for post-conference will be fixed soon so we can use it for next semester's post-conferences.
It has been frustrating holding post-conferences since the water leak occurred in our usual room.
I have 7 students only, so it was not really chaotic for mr during pre and post conference. The lack of a conference room is a problem specially with HIPPA.When I give them their patient's assignment, I go to each one of them. At post conference, when they give report, they don't mention any of the patient's names or their room #.
Hi Peter:
Like you, I also teach students in the clinical setting. I have found that even the pre and post conference areas are out of my control as far as environment is concerned.
With HIPPA regulations, it is becoming more and more difficult to find an appropriate area to teach students during these times.
Any suggestions?
