Have picture board, will travel
Educators can take lessons on the road
Mercy Medical Home Health in Daphne, AL, needed to make its training portable to meet the needs of staff in four home health offices.
The best solution seemed to be to create a learning board decorated with laminated pictures, photographs, and written information.
"We might present four to 10 subjects in 10 to 30 minutes, and these different topics could range from basic mandatory information like confidentiality and road safety to nutrition, catheter care, vital signs, and Hoyer lifts," says Starr Flynn, RN, staff instructor for the agency, which serves southern Alabama along the Gulf Coast.
The picture board works this way:
• First, topics are chosen, and the staff who are most knowledgeable about the topics are the ones who help gather information. "Education is a shared responsibility," Flynn says.
• Next, pictures are laminated if possible and taped to the board. Flynn says the agency sometimes uses Velcro on the backs of pictures and sticks them to the board this way. Another trick would be to put pictures between plastic slip-in pouches and tape these to the board.
• Use the pictures to launch into discussions. For example, the education manager can show pictures of the urinary drainage system and then talk about how urinary catheters can cause frequent urinary tract infections because bacteria could travel into the urinary system through that passageway, Flynn says.
• Create labels that can be stuck next to the pictures. In the example above, labels could be created to say, "This is an area where bacteria can enter." Then, during the inservice, the educator might ask the nurses and home health aides to work together and put the labels beside the pictures where bacterial problems could occur, Flynn says.
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content