MODULE 4: Teaching with Technology

I have held different positions in my nursing career both in long term care, occupational health and home health care setting where I was always teaching. Some positions may have involved less teaching than others and to varied audiences from patients, families, caregivers, colleagues, and so forth. As a case manager I was teaching patients and caregivers, or teaching clinical staff in my role as clinical education and staff development. Currently in my role as a new director of nursing in a home health agency, I am constantly teaching clinicians about documentation, best practices in patient care, and so forth.  

Health care providers who are not involved in direct patient care might not be actively teaching patients but most likely are involved in brief, informal teaching moments with colleagues or clients.I have also learned that in order to be credible in what you teach (especially healthy lifestyle/habits) you have to be an example of what you are teaching. 

Technology plays a significant role in information dissemination in this century and the future and is therefore an important tool to incorporate in our teaching and learning. I can teach a cousin living in the Philippines that same day she asked my help on how to care for her newborn baby just by sending her an email and attaching a link to a website with this information. 

I am so grateful to have taken this class for all the things I am learning including technology. I have attached a link to our N6004 Wiki page. You must register as a member to be able to add, edit or participate in discussions about this great technology we call personal digital assistants (PDAs). Wiki away..... my friends.
http://editthis.info/nurs_6004_mobile_devices/Main_Page

MODULE 3 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

This is coming from my heart-I love this class! 
Being raised in a small Philippine village without water and electricity, I didn't imagine that I will have the opportunities I have now.
Today, I learned how to create a screen shot!

This module reinforces the importance of having the ability to retrieve relevant information and locating appropriate sources for evidence-based practice. I used CINAHL, PubMed, National Guideline Clearinghouse and Google.

I have more success with CINAHL than PubMed. With CINAHL I found more articles with available full text. It was easy to narrow down my results for relevance using Boolean phrases, English language, publication year, age of population, type of article, and linked full text. 

Using the guideline index that is, National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC), I am actually very happy to have found this because of the wealth of information I can use for my current clinical practice in home health and my future faculty practice. I can browse by topics, organizations, complete index, which are topics under each organization. There are also guideline resources such as AHRQ’s evidence reports, hospital-acquired conditions, patient education materials and so forth. With my search topic “home care versus hospital AND cost”, it yielded irrelevant results despite using advance search such as keywords, age of population, guidelines category, intended users, year of publication. The reason behind my unsuccessful search result might be that NGC is an index for clinical practice guidelines and do not include topics covering financial cost between health care areas including my search topic. 

The first three pages of my Google search yielded a few highly relevant topics. The rest of the pages were published by special interest groups and solicitors. While Google provides a good resource for research articles, it is still wise to use recommended sources for evidence based-practice for health care through PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane and University of Utah’s libraries. 


Search away friends... :)