Team Huddle Implementation in a General Pediatric Clinic.

Teamwork and communication are critical to ensure safe and quality patient care. However, the ability to affect these constructs within well-established healthcare settings is challenging. Using a quality improvement approach, staff development educators collaborated with clinical nursing staff to implement a daily team huddle. When incorporated into the workflow, a team huddle can promote communication and positively influence how teams function within a clinical area.(See CE Video, Supplemental Digital Content 1, http://links.lww.com/JNPD/A9).

Recruitment and retention strategies for a community-based weight management study for multi-ethnic elementary school children and their parents.

This article describes successful recruitment and retention strategies for a community-based weight management study in two school districts in North Carolina. Recruitment and retention on both district and school levels and child and parent levels are discussed. A total of 358 children and 358 parents from eight schools in rural North Carolina participated in a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of a nutrition and exercise education, coping skills training, and exercise intervention. Recruitment and retention at the district and school level included meeting with superintendents and receiving a proper introduction to school principals and consistently clear communication throughout the study. At the school level, relationships were developed with the principal and other key personnel to keep lines of communication open during the study. Recruitment and retention strategies at the child and parent level included allowing adequate time for questions during consent and assent and providing a free nutrition and exercise program, a light meal, homework assistance, child care for other children who came to the program, and transportation vouchers if needed. Successful recruitment and retention strategies at the district and school levels and child and parent levels are important for conducting longitudinal community-based studies.

"Leaving the comfort of the familiar": fostering workplace cultural awareness through short-term global experiences.

PROBLEM: Facilitating the development of student nurses' cultural competence and translating these experiences into the clinical setting. METHODS: Qualitative methods. FINDINGS: A short-term global immersion experience informs student nurses' cultural awareness, education, and future clinical practice. CONCLUSIONS: Participation in a short-term global health experience contributes to students' personal growth and broadens their insight into multicultural care.

Graduate nurses' comfort and knowledge level regarding tracheostomy care.

This study examined 104 new graduate nurses' (GNs) comfort level before and after a tracheostomy inservice educational session. Results indicate no correlation between reported comfort level and knowledge in caring for patients with tracheostomies. Findings demonstrate that GNs can benefit significantly from inservice education and skills integration. This suggests that hands-on skills content should be a priority for inclusion into nurse residency programs, particularly with specialized, high-risk, low-incidence nursing skills, regardless of how comfortable nurses report they are with a given patient population.

Reasons to customize a tracheostomy patient education booklet.

Given the breadth of commercial materials currently available for patient education, healthcare providers are often led to believe that it is no longer necessary to generate institution-specific patient education materials. This paper describes the comprehensive methods and criteria used by a group of inpatient nurse educators to critically review their existing booklet for tracheostomy patient education against those available commercially. The group concluded that a revised institution-specific publication remains the best complement to their program for tracheostomy patient teaching.

Utilization and perceived benefits of postoperative otology in-service training for inpatient nurses.

This study examined the perceived effectiveness of in-service training (IST) to improve the nursing care of post-operative otology patients as a function of nursing experience. IST was administered to four distinct units in a large university hospital, examining nurses with a range of experiences in otology care. An eight-item IST evaluation instrument was developed, administered, and validated for this study. The results of this study indicate the following: a variation existed among units in the receptiveness to IST; a 15-20-minute IST session significantly improved the perceived ability to deliver quality patient care; similar effectiveness of the IST was observed for all otology care groups; and an oral IST approach was more effective than a self-study approach. Further, we found that IST increased awareness and utilization of specialty support services.