Creative efforts drive goals home
To help them remember, write a poem!
No one ever says "as memorable as a PowerPoint slide," do they? Or "as much fun as a white paper." If you want people to remember something important, you have to spark their interest. And when the material is as dry as patient safety goals, well, you have your work cut out for you.
But Darla Caldwell, RN, BSN, CPPS, director of patient safety at Baptist Saint Anthony Health System in Amarillo, TX, has a creative streak in her that makes meetings about things you have to remember much more entertaining.
The latest endeavor is a comic book related to the National Patient Safety Goals written in the rhyming meter of Dr. Seuss and peppered with Seussian characters in bright colors.
One stanza reads:
They have new goals, they are forthcoming
So many pages it is mind numbing
National Patient Safety is the theme
Quality Patient Care will be SUPREME
Each goal will have a very clear mission
We're here to make it your primary vision
Infection Prevention is where we'll start
Keep Number 7 close to heart
"We just take something that is known and change it around to teach something," she explains. "It works — they remember the patient safety goals, and you can hear them rhyming under their breath."
For a project around MRSA, Caldwell and her team once created a bug character that came to every learning session. Chester the Cheetah is another creative character that they used. He passed out cheese doodles and was used as a character in handouts for several projects. "If you add a colorful character, it helps people remember. They do not want the same old bullet point presentation. They want something new."
She learned the value of creative endeavors in nursing school, where they used mnemonic devices to remember things like the bones of the wrist — "Never lower Tillie's pants, mama might come home," she recited easily, 20 years after learning the phrase.
For the comic book, which was a large project, every person on her staff worked on creating rhymes for one of the goals. Then they came together and manipulated the poems, brainstormed ideas, and finally came up with a final version. It took a couple months to complete and get off to the printer. There were 3,000 copies printed — one for every employee in the system. For the infection control goal alone, they did a mini-comic book as well, and there is a bookmark and a PowerPoint presentation that no one finds boring.
Once you get creative, it is hard to stop. "We were doing something on proper catheter bag handling, so we had nurses pose for a series of pictures on what you should — and shouldn't — do with the bag. Like you do not hang it on the IV pole during transport, complete with a horrified-looking 'patient' in the wheelchair." They handed out the resulting picture book to anyone who came in contact with catheter bags, including imaging and transport staff. Sure enough, catheter-associated urinary tract infections declined. "It works much better than a plain old QI project," she says.
Caldwell would have loved to share the comic book with all and sundry, but the system lawyer says that while fair use laws would likely find it okay to use Dr. Seuss internally in a single organization, shipping it out to others, without knowing how they would use it might be a breach of copyright.
As a final taste of her rhyming skills, consider this from the hand hygiene section of the book and see if it doesn't stick in your head all day:
Soap, Soap, Soap
Gel, Gel, Gel
Which one's best to keep you well?
Using hand gel is the way,
unless there's C-Diff, then we say,
Soap and water MUST be used,
to kill the germs, do not get confused!
Soap, Soap, Soap
Gel, Gel, Gel
Staying clean will keep you well
For more information on this topic, contact Darla Caldwell, RN, BSN, CPPS, Director of Patient Safety, Baptist Saint Anthony Health System, Amarillo, TX. Email: [email protected].
No one ever says "as memorable as a PowerPoint slide," do they? Or "as much fun as a white paper." If you want people to remember something important, you have to spark their interest. And when the material is as dry as patient safety goals, well, you have your work cut out for you.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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