Homework Lance
Weekly Reflective Journal
Week 1-
This week was a great week with my mentor, just getting started and developing relationship. My mentor -Lora Lee Titza is super knowledgeable and I could listen to her talk all day. We got a lot of work done, and I truly understand the challenges the nursing profession face daily. I spent time familiarizing myself with EBP and how I will use it for my study. EBP provides the facts needed to support necessary changes in nursing practice. I discussed my goals with Lora and how we would communicate weekly throughout this course.
Week 2-
This week I have chosen my topic that I will be focusing on thru this course. I will be discussing hospital aquired infections. I also utilized the GCU library to help me with my selections of articles. I met with my mentor to discuss my topic. She helped me with selecting articles and goals for this course. We collaborated with all of the leadership team of the hospital to discuss these hospital aquired infections and what the issues have been related to them at this hospital.
Week 3-
This week my mentor discussed the EBP project with the infection control practitioner about implementation of any new changes and process’s we find. A few glitches regarding current process’s on how the hospital is checking the rooms after housekeeping cleans. We spent time educating the housekeeping staff on what products were necessary on which isolations patient’s when they are discharged. We discussed a standardized approach to following infection control guidelines. I developed a simple easy to read chart based on what infections patients had and cleaning requirements. The infection control practitioner expressed this was helpful.
Week 4
This week my mentor and I met again to discuss the EBP project. She made a lot of helpful recommendations related to the system. My mentor took me thru her day to day tasks so I could better understand what Directors of Nursing do daily. It is a super challenging position. I can see where it would be a little overwhelming.
Week 5-
This week I made some great progress and positive changes to my EBP. Time was spent with my mentor and the nurses involved in the patient care that impacts hospital aquired infections. Education was provided to the nurses and aides regarding hospital aquired infections and lowering readmission rates based from this. My mentor had a lot of exciting stuff going on I just wanted to follow her and retain as much knowledge as possible. I learned a lot about meningitis as we had a patient coming from another hospital that was being treated for meningitis. He also had shingles, so I could get a lot of great real-life scenarios.
Week 6-
This week the hospital census went down and there were a lot of cancellations of staff. It was stressful for my mentor because she oversees staffing this hospital and cancelling nurses. They sometimes need the money and are cancelled. We still had to complete all our EBP and did a lot of reading and analyzing articles. It is all tied to patient satisfactions scores and hospital reimbursement. My mentor and I discussed hospital policies being in line with healthcare policies. We considered how nurses are the largest group in the healthcare field and we need to be engaged in health policy to make changes. We discussed a lot of patients with different infections and how they are handled in the hospital setting.
Week 7-
Worked a lot with mentor on my research. We discussed all my articles and how to positively effect changes in healthcare. We went to meetings that my mentor had to do, I learned a lot about hospital operations and nursing management. Nursing expectations at the hospital level. We discussed staffing, education, orientations of new nurses. I am truly learning a lot from my mentor.
Week 8-
We went over competencies for leadership roles within a hospital organization. Discussed key objectives and core measures that have to be obtained by hospital leadership teams. I learned a lot from my mentor this week regarding hospital expectations of leadership staff. I worked a lot on my final paper this week. My mentor gave me her feedback on what I have so far.
Week 9-
Wrapped up all content related to final paper and turned it in this week. Super nervous about how I did. My mentor gave me a lot of great feedback on my final paper. We had a staff meeting that I could assist with for the nursing staff at the hospital. I could discuss my findings from my EBP. Everyone was super interested and asked a lot of questions.
Week 10
Final week with my mentor. She wanted to let me know How much I have helped her throughout this 10 weeks. She was super appreciative and said I would make a great leader. I could discuss with the staff that I was no longer going to be attending everything with my mentor. I truly enjoyed my experiences this 10 weeks. While time consuming, I am super grateful to my mentor for helping me.
Soooo happy it is over!!!
Thanks so much Jen for all of your support and hard work thru this journey…
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