Evaluating Your Own Practice By Kym Otremba Nursing 324

1. As a nurse in the emergency department, I make sure I am delivering quality care by following the standards of nursing practice. I look at every patient as if they were my family and treat them how I would treat my family member. 2. To continue my education I take advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) and basic life support (BLS) yearly. I also read articles provided to our emergency room. I attend yearly conferences, which are sometimes costly because our hospital isnt paying for any continuing education. 3. Evaluating my practice is a little difficult. I receive patient feedback and use it for improving my nursing practice. We also do a quarterly peer review and that also helps me evaluate my everyday practice. 4. I help others in my department by assisting with tasks needed and being a role model to new nurses. I am on the orientation team for my department and that entails making sure the new employees know the ins and outs of the emergency department. 5. As a 9 bed emergency department that sees 18,000 patients a year, it is vital that we work as a team. Every person in our department is aware of the other persons job, and respect the work that each and every person does. We share patients and have to communicate with each other of the care provided. Our team includes registered nurses, doctors, ER clerk/tech and registration staff 6. On a daily basis in the emergency department I treat patients as if they were my family, I advocate for the patients and families, I treat everyone with dignity and respect no matter what their background is. 7. I did research for my English 321 class last semester. I researched the use of intraosseous devices in the emergency department. An intraosseous device is IV access that is put into

a boney surface instead of a peripheral IV line. After the research, our emergency department registered nurses are now allowed to use intraosseous devices in emergent cases. I believe most medicine is based on research and continues to improve as more research is done. 8. As a rural emergency department we refer patients on a daily basis to specialty care. We have no cardiology, neurology, GI specialty, or many other specialties that our patients need. I think we are cost effective because we have to be, the management at our hospital is always pushing to reduce cost. We have been on a budget for so long at our hospital that it comes natural to take the appropriate steps to save money where we can. 9. I am a team player. As discussed in prior questions I am part of the orientation team for our emergency department. We work as a team with the patient being the center of care. It is amazing how similar our personalities are in the emergency department. We are strong, independent women that our poor doctors have to deal with every day.