Self-learning module meets JCAHO standards
Geriatric competency includes drug interactions
The Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has made it clear that home care agencies must have age-specific competency testing.
Why reinvent the wheel, one home care educator wonders. You easily can find educational material from your agency’s library, an Internet search, or from publishers that create age-specific educational booklets. Sure, you have to create your own competency exam, but that need not be difficult.
"We’re a small rural agency, so I didn’t have time to make a formal program, so I handed out packets with articles and a quiz, and that’s all they really needed," says Jan Sramek, MN, RNC, CM, a nursing supervisor with Socorro (NM) General Hospital Home Care/Hospice. The hospital-based agency serves central and west- central New Mexico.
Sramek gave staff one week to complete a self-learning packet on medication interactions in the elderly. "If you give them two weeks, then they’ll do it on the last day," she says, explaining why she limits staff to one week to study and finish the test.
Putting the competency together was fairly simple, she adds. She purchased some booklets on geriatric competencies from Channing L. Bete of South Deerfield, MA. Then she added handouts on food and drug interactions.
Sramek also required nurses to learn how to use the Medication Appropriateness Index, which was developed by Joseph T. Hanlon, PharmD, MS, clinical instructor and coordinator of pharmacogeriatrics in the division of geriatric medicine, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, and a clinical assistant professor in the school of pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"I went to a pharmacist and asked her to call up some articles she thought would be useful," Sramek says. "She found some articles for me, and I looked through them, finding bits and pieces to copy because I didn’t want to overwhelm people with too many things."
Also, she required nurses to read a chapter from a book on drugs for the elderly.
The only materials she created from scratch were the test questions and a set of learning objectives. (Those objectives, along with a review list and set of test questions, are inserted in this issue.)
Sources
• Channing L. Bete, 200 State Road, South Deerfield, MA 01373. Phone: (800) 477-4776. Fax: (800) 499-6464. Web site: www.channing-bete.com.
• Joseph T. Hanlon, PharmD, MS, Clinical Instructor and Coordinator of Pharmacogeriatrics, Division of Geriatric Medicine, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, Box 3003, Duke Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710. Web: www.geri.duke.edu/people/hanlonj.html.
• Jan Sramek, MN, RNC, CM, Nursing Supervisor, Socorro General Hospital Home Care/Hospice, P.O. Box 1009, Socorro, NM 87801-1009. Phone: (505) 835-8343. Fax: (505) 835-1125.
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