Introduction

Greetings!

My name is Daphne Hurm, I am a staff nurse in the IU Health North in the ER.   I graduated Nursing school in 1996, and began my career in Evansville in Emergency Medicine.  Along the way, I have worked in the Neuro Critical Care at Methodist, in the Methodist ER and also with LifeLine.  The vast majority of my career has been spent in emergency medicine. While I arrange the vast majority of the unit based orientation and education for our department,  I would like to obtain a more formal position as an educator for emergency medicine services.

An educational project I would like to focus on is the development of a program that helps develop competency in low volume, high acuity procedures.   We seem to have a handful of procedures and/or situations that occur in the ER on a fairly infrequent basis, but, are high stakes situations.  When working in the Methodist ER, not only were those situations more frequent, but there were always more staff members around to ensure someone knew how to manage the high acuity event.  In a smaller ER, there are fewer staff members, and less frequency of high acuity events.   An example of such a procedure is an elective intubation with rapid sequence intubation drugs and the appropriate use of sedation and chemical paralysis after intubation.

Learner objectives would include :

1.  The learner will demonstrate understanding of the steps of RSI procedure and the nursing role.

2.  The learner demonstrates competent understanding of RSI drugs such as Fentanyl, etomidate, succinylcholine, nimbex, rocuronium, versed, propofol, etc. Learner should be able to discuss indications, onset, duration of action,  and contraindications for these medications and any other frequently used medications for sedation and chemical paralysis.

3. The learner knows the appropriate equipment to prepare for intubation procedure as well as the difficult airway equipment in case of unexpected complications.


These objectives need a lot of polishing, as I am not well versed in writing objectives.  But, that is a skill I anticipate I will be learning soon.  Additionally, other things I have learned in the past two weeks include basics of blogging, and opportunities that technology presents for improved delivery of education.  Technology offers so many options for enhancing learning opportunities.  I didn't even know avenues such as Diigo even existed prior to this course.