Weekly tip sheets give staff fast updates
It's difficult for education managers to find time to inform staff about the many changes in home health care or to remind them to brush up on certain basic skills. Plus, nurses, home health aides, and other employees are often too busy to do any outside reading or research.
The education manager at Angeles Home Health Care in Los Angeles has come up with a simple solution. She types up a one-page "Tip of the Week" and distributes it to staff. "It has been my experience that instilling information in little bits can be quite effective," says Patricia Deeb, RNC, BSN, PHN, nurse educator for the agency, which covers all of Los Angeles County. The agency's patient census is between 275 and 375, and the agency makes an average of 7,200 patient visits each month.
"I started the Tip of the Week in early January in order to relay to the nursing staff some interesting information I had learned in my reading of medical/nursing journals," Deeb says.
Tip sheets sometimes include photographs or drawings, and they're often printed on brightly colored paper. Sometimes they include quizzes or guidelines. Topics include everything from information about a new medication to drawing blood and checking patients for edema. (See sample tip sheets, inserted in this issue.)
She says other managers and employees also give her ideas for the tips. "The people in different departments alert me if there is a problem with something."
In addition, she has asked employees in departments such as therapy, social services, dietary, and pharmacy to contribute to the tip sheets by explaining what their departments do for patients. "This is for more than just explaining policy. It is to remind the nurses of the extra help that is available to them and their patients."
Deeb recently expanded the tip sheets' role to that of relaying information from the nursing administration to staff. "Even with this heavier purpose, I try to keep the essence light and non-punitive. I don't want the nurses to dread seeing it in their mailboxes."
Nurses have responded positively, she says. "They often contribute to it through suggestions for topics or tips gained through their own valuable nursing experiences."
She also distributes one-page sheets, called "Just a Gentle Reminder." One recent reminder read: "If your wound dressing protocol includes a wet to dry or moist dressing, you must state in your physician's orders and in your daily skilled nurse notes what you are using to wet your dressing!!!"
The tip sheets typically take her four to five hours a week of reading, writing, and reviewing the material. "I work on them on and off for a week, and I start to think about my next one before I get one tip sheet out," she says.
She asks other managers to review her tip sheets before she distributes them to each nurse. "I use a friendly, no-pressure tone so that the nurses will feel the spirit in which it is written, which is'Gee, isn't this interesting? I just thought you'd like to know.'"
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