Overview

This week, the scholarly activity that I took part in was a wound care seminar which lasted for four days. Routine seminars were a major part of this organization’s culture. The seminars were a source of empowerment and inspiration for nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers working in various units. The seminars provided the latest wound care management standards as a way of attaining excellence and improving patient health outcomes. It also presented an opportunity to obtain ongoing education credits and improve clinical outcomes in nursing practice. As a nurse, I always believe that the most significant aspects of nursing practice are…

Throughout the RN-to-BSN program, students are required to participate in scholarly activities outside of clinical practice or professional practice. Examples of scholarly activities include attending conferences, seminars, journal club, grand rounds, morbidity and mortality meetings, interdisciplinary committees, quality improvement committees, and any other opportunities available at your site, within your community, or nationally.

You are required to post one scholarly activity while you are in the BSN program, which should be documented by the end of this course. In addition to this submission, you are required to be involved and contribute to interdisciplinary initiatives on a regular basis.

Submit, as the assignment, a summary report of the scholarly activity, including who, what, where, when and any relevant take-home points. Include the appropriate program competencies associated with the scholarly activity as well as future professional goals related to this activity. You may use the “Scholarly Activity Summary” resource to help guide this assignment.

While APA format is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

You are not required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.

AttachmentsNRS-490-RS-ScholarlyActivitySummary.docx

Scholarly Activity Summary

This document describes the scholarly activity elements that should be included in a five paragraph summary. You may use this resource to help guide the preparation of the Scholarly Activities assignment, due in Topic 10.

Overview

This section consists of a single paragraph that succinctly describes the scholarly activity that you attended/participated in, the target market for the activity, and the benefit of the activity to you.

Problem

This section consists of either a short narrative or a list of bullet points that concisely identifies the problems the scholarly activity is designed to solve. Educate: What is the current state of the activity topic? Explain why this is a problem, and for whom is it a problem? Inspire: What could a nurse achieve by participating in the scholarly activity? Use declarative sentences with simple words to communicate each point. Less is more.

Solution

This section consists of either a short paragraph or a list of bullet points that concisely describes the solution to a proposed practice problem that the scholarly activity addressed and how it addresses the problem outlined in the previous section.

Opportunity

This section consists of short paragraphs that define the opportunity that the scholarly activity is designed to capture. It is important to cover the objectives and goals that were met. How will attending/participating in this scholarly activity help you grow as a nurse?

Program Competencies Addressed

This section consists of a list of program competencies that were addressed in this scholarly activity. Please use the list from the ISP.

Scholarly Activities NRS-490

Student’s Name

Institution of Affiliation

Course Name

Date

Overview

This week, the scholarly activity that I took part in was a wound care seminar which lasted for four days. Routine seminars were a major part of this organization’s culture. The seminars were a source of empowerment and inspiration for nurses, physicians and other healthcare providers working in various units. The seminars provided the latest wound care management standards as a way of attaining excellence and improving patient health outcomes. It also presented an opportunity to obtain ongoing education credits and improve clinical outcomes in nursing practice. As a nurse, I always believe that the most significant aspects of nursing practice are: maintaining professional membership and remaining committed to lifelong learning. I also attended a pressure ulcer IDT meeting through which healthcare professionals learned from various wound specialization experts, asked questions and acquired new knowledge on what wasn’t taught in class.

The pressure ulcer IDT meeting had four major goals: to develop a new pressure ulcer prevention program through well-defined roles and responsibilities of staff, to develop unit-level plans and to train staff on new strategies to reduce pressure ulcers. Both the seminar and the pressure ulcer IDT meeting were well planned for. The seminar was sponsored and organized by the American Professional Wound Care Association. The IDT meeting was headed by a certified wound care nurse and comprised of nutritionists, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, and physicians. To actualize its goal, the IDT meeting, identified and replaced routine clinical practices that either delayed or prevented wound healing based on organizational wound management guidelines. This resulted in the development of three teams: an implementation team, a wound care team and a unit-based team.

The whole activity was a motivation for nurses who were passionate about specializing in wound care. The key target of the seminar and pressure ulcer IDT meeting were healthcare professionals working in the surgical unit, palliative care, and the ICU.

Problem

Pressure ulcer IDT meeting reviewed two major issues who one quality of care and care coordination.

• Quality of Care In Pressure Ulcer Management (1)
• Coordination of care with Interdisciplinary Team(1)

Members of the IDT meeting analyzed each of the cases and listened to the input provided by every staff member who was present. In every case that was reviewed, a  particular set of questions were used to determine whether depending on the patient’s outcome the pressure ulcer care provided was either excellent, good or poor with regards to quality and care coordination. The findings were scored as 3, 2 or 1 respectively.

Solution

• Quality of Care In Pressure Ulcer Management- the staff members gave it a score of 2. There were numerous gaps identified in nursing practice such as: failing to provide ongoing reports and communication, failure to integrate the prevention of pressure ulcer in continuous nursing processes. To address this, the implementation team, a wound care team and a unit-based team were formed. These teams were to come up with a communication policy that could clearly explain the how unit champions, unit managers and staff can communicate, give updates using collected data and probably share essential changes in patient safety in wound care plans. The unit-based team was mandated to identify communication strategies of telling families/patients on care progress and sharing skin and risk assessment data when handing over shift reports.
• Coordination of care with Interdisciplinary Team (1) – the staff members gave it a score of 3 to imply that wound management care within the unit was excellent due to good coordination. Although there were no gaps in care that were identified, several recommendations were given on how to make care more coordinated including having more specific roles and responsibilities for every member of the interdisciplinary team.

Opportunity

            By actively participating in this activity, I was able to improve individual knowledge and skills on wound management and ability to work with other professionals in interdisciplinary teams to provide coordinated care. I achieved the professional competency role (Domain 1) through teamwork with the surgical unit staff namely: nutritionist, pharmacists, wound care nurse specialist, wound specialization physicians and nurse practitioners to address key issues in pressure ulcer wound management (1.1), took management and leadership roles with an aim of  promoting holistic and cultural competent care(1.3) and  actively participated in the development of guidelines and policies to improve care delivery and accountability among healthcare team members for  improved clinical outcomes of patients with pressure ulcers (1.4).

Similarly, by taking part in this scholarly activity, I was able to explore nursing theories and how they can be applied in clinical practice to positively influence clinical outcomes (Domain 2) This influenced the ability to use critical thinking to solve real patient scenarios (2.3). Since intense discussions were held and decisions made in the pressure ulcer the IDT meeting with the certified wound care nurse as the first line communication manager, the domain of informatics (Domain 4) was similarly addressed.

Program Competencies Addressed

The program competencies addressed by participating in this scholarly summary activity were competency 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 2.3 and 4.3

References

Coffey, M., Fry, L., Cardenas, L. A., Wing, W., & Skinner, M. (2015). An interdisciplinary approach to pressure ulcer reduction. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 16(3), B18-B19.

Mervis, J. S., & Phillips, T. J. (2019). Pressure ulcers: prevention and management. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Mwebaza, I., Katende, G., Groves, S., & Nankumbi, J. (2014). Nurses’ knowledge, practices, and barriers in the care of patients with pressure ulcers in a Ugandan teaching hospital. Nursing research and practice, 2014.