Free Nursing Contact Hours

Interoperability: Smart IT Systems Working Together
4 free nursing contact hours from http://www.nurse.com and the University of Phoenix.

National Nurses Week 5/6/2016 - 5/12/2016

Some excellent education offerings from HIMSS in honor of National Nurses Week!
http://www.himss.org/national-nurses-week

Perspectives of a 21st century patient

This is the expectation of our clients today.

I finally found a doctor who uses modern technology

Infographics and IKEA manuals as teaching tools

Lots of information in a minimal space.

http://lifehacker.com/master-nine-hard-to-eat-foods-with-these-ikea-style-gui-1771280431

http://lifehacker.com/this-graphic-reveals-10-cognitive-biases-that-shape-our-1771488993

Gamification as a tool and Ed Tech trends

10 ways Gamification can save Online Learning
http://www.growthengineering.co.uk/10-ways-gamification-can-save-online-learning/

Gamification, personalization and continued education are trending in edtech
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/08/1301192/

Content Curation

The how and why of Content Curation for eLearning

http://www.efrontlearning.net/blog/2016/04/content-curation-for-elearning.html

Hospital Password Security

Healthcare providers are notorious for creating weak passwords and I know there is a significant amount of recreational web surfing using institutional computers. Trying to convince users to create "real" passwords and engage is safe computing can be tough. Perhaps these stories should be part of every newcomer orientation.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/the-hospital-held-hostage-by-hackers.html

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/23/ketucky-hospital-calls-state-of-emergency-in-hack-attack.html

Why gamification?

Some answers to the question "why gamification?"

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF GAMIFICATION IN ONLINE LEARNING

http://www.growthengineering.co.uk/the-neuroscience-of-gamification-in-online-learning/

Measuring blood sugar from tears

http://medicalfuturist.com/2016/04/07/googles-amazing-digital-contact-lens-can-transform-diabetes-care/

Google developed a digital contact lens which will monitor blood sugar levels and transmit data to an external application.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contact_Lens

Duolingo - An excellent example of eLearning and gamification

I've been using Duolingo to study Spanish. The format makes a lot of sense to me and is an excellent example of using gamification principles in eLearning. Take a look at the article from the eLearning Mind website:
http://elearningmind.com/now-youre-speaking-language-duolingo-teaches-us-microlearning/

I appreciate the degree of user control, easily managed modules, multiple means of interaction, user reinforcement and the opportunity to ask questions/engage in social learning with other students.

If you haven't seen Duolingo, (http://www.duolingo.com) it's very much worth a visit.
And to top it off, it's free!

Microsoft Office Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

LifeHacker has been publishing e series of excellent resources for MS Office training.

http://lifehacker.com/tag/microsoft-office-week
http://lifehacker.com/top-10-cheat-sheets-to-help-you-master-microsoft-office-1768667500
http://lifehacker.com/everything-you-need-to-master-microsoft-office-1768495235
http://lifehacker.com/eight-useful-microsoft-excel-shortcuts-worth-memorizing-1767484423

I have always been fond of the tutorials at GCF Learnfree.
http://www.gcflearnfree.org/

Free contact hours from OnCourse Learning

http://goo.gl/ms8njq

Course descriptions from the nurse.com website:

Resumes: The Recruiter’s Perspective

Sheila J. Leis, MSN, RN, BC

The goal of this continuing education program is to update nurses’ expertise in formulating professional resumes and cover letters. After studying the information presented here, you will be able to identify the importance of the resume and cover letter to the employment process, describe content appropriate for a nurse’s resume, and prepare an effective resume and cover letter or update an existing one.

RN to BSN: Aligning Your Personality Characteristics with Your Career Goals

Keith Carlson, RN, BSN, NC-BC

With the recommendation that 80% of nurses hold a bachelor’s degree by 2020, many RN’s may be considering advancing their education. Have you considered what areas within nursing you might like to explore? Might certain personality characteristics help you enjoy some nursing specialties more than others? Is your dream to work in management, administration, education or research? Is your desire to avoid specific job duties such as management? Try to align your strengths and personality characteristics with a nursing role you might enjoy! Perhaps there is an area of nursing you haven’t considered as a possibility for you. As you decide to further your education, an analysis of research and individual personality characteristics may help you align your goals within nursing areas you might enjoy the most.

Looking Toward the Future: Nursing Roles Across the Continuum

Jennifer S. Mensik, PhD, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

Looking for a position outside of the traditional acute care setting? Nursing is filled with so many opportunities one can never get bored! However, there are many possibilities when looking at everything across a continuum. Learn about different settings and how you can transition successfully from one setting to another!

Creating a Professional Practice Environment in any Healthcare Setting

Deborah Maust Martin, DNP, MBA, RN, NE-BC, FACHE

Regardless of your work setting, research shows that an improved work environment is linked to less nurse burnout and less job dissatisfaction. Creating a professional practice environment is no easy task! Whether you are a nurse manager or staff RN, there are many ways you can influence change for the better!

Nurse, Take Care of Thy Self 

Kim Richards, RN, NC-BC

Nursing is a stressful profession! Nurses are known for taking care of others at the cost of their own wellbeing. Lack of self-care can lead to compassion fatigue, personal health issues, and a lack of work life balance. When a nurse takes the time to care for themselves, both their colleagues and patients will reap the benefit. As easy as it sounds, it can be hard to create a work life balance, exercise, and be a nurse role model. When pursuing continuing education or a new professional role, self-care and time management are key to helping yourself be successful.

NIOSH Training for Nurses on Shift Work and Long Work Hours

From the CDC

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2015-115/?s_cid=3ni7d2shiftworktrain032016

Part 1 (CDC Course No. WB2408) provides 1.5 contact hours.
Part 2 (CDC Course No. WB2409) provides 1.7 contact hours.

 

"Course Description

The purpose of this online training program is to educate nurses and their managers about the health and safety risks associated with shift work, long work hours, and related workplace fatigue issues and relay strategies in the workplace and in the nurse’s personal life to reduce these risks. Part 1 (CDC Course No. WB2408) is designed to increase knowledge about the wide range of risks linked to these work schedules and related fatigue issues and promote understanding about why these risks occur. This knowledge provides background information for Part 2 of the training program. Part 2 (CDC Course No. WB2409) is designed to increase knowledge about personal behaviors and workplace systems to reduce these risks. Content for this training program is derived from scientific literature on shift work, long work hours, sleep, and circadian rhythms."

 

SINI 2009

Just returned from the Summer Insitute in Nursing Informatics at the University of Maryland in Baltimore http://nursing.umaryland.edu/sini/index.htm. It is a great conference with an outstanding group of people and I had a wonderful time networking with longtime and new colleagues as well as learning from the presentations.

The conference is being tweeted by Peter Murray, Margaret Hansen, and Scott Erdly (#sini2009) or http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23sini09 and blogged a thttp://www.hi-blogs.info/

My presentation "What is RSS and What Does it Have to do with Nursing" is below:

Sini2009 Rss Nsg

View more presentations from wfperry.

While reviewing my favorites list one resource I should have included was MedWorm (http://www.medworm.com/) with its 6000 healthcare related RSS feeds!

Impressive Microsoft Offerings for Schools

Microsoft is bringing its widely adopted Live@edu collaboration suite to Moodle, the open source learning management system (LMS) that's installed at more than 35,000 registered, validated sites worldwide. Microsoft also unveiled today its new Education Labs site, which will serve as a repository for education software developed on an accelerated cycle.
From: http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/07/21/Moodle-Links-with-Live-edu.aspx?p=1

Also see: http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/free-hosted-student-email.aspx

Another couple of fun links for healthcare folks!

Ves Dimov posted these on his Clinical Cases and Images Blog

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/music-video-enzyme-what-are-you-doing.html
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/video-neutrophil-chasing-bacteria-set.html

"Whose on first?" updated

http://akipta.blogspot.com/2009/04/your-my-documents-funny-tech-training.html

I can just imaging Abbott and Costello doing this!

Zotero

Along the same lines as Evernote, Zotero is a web based application that works with Firefox only. Create an account at http://www.zotero.org/, download the application, and it installs itself to work with Firefox. What can you do with it? Here is the feature list directly from the website:

• Automatically capture citations
• Remotely back up and sync your library
• Store PDFs, images, and web pages
• Cite from within Word and OpenOffice
• Take rich-text notes in any language
• Wide variety of import/export options
• Free, open source, and extensible
• Collaborate with group libraries
• Organize with collections and tags
• Access your library from anywhere
• Automatically grab metadata for PDFs
• Use thousands of bibliographic styles
• Instantly search your PDFs and notes
• Advanced search and data mining tools
• Interface available in over 30 languages
• Recommendation engine and RSS feeds

The ability to export citations in APA format is a tremendous asset for student and faculty publications. For me, this one of the biggest distinguishing features and one that would make me more likely to recommend it to students.

I had previously put the USB version of Firefox on my flash drive, so I downloaded and installed Zotero on the drive as well. It works very well and you can synchronize the flash drive documents and citations with the web version.

While it works only with Firefox it is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Evernote has versions for both Windows and Macs and works with both IE and Firefox.

Both Evernote and Zotero would be excellent tools to create a repository for a Personal Learning Environment.

Evernote

David Rothman's recent posting "Screencast: Evernote as a Medical Student’s Peripheral Brain" at http://davidrothman.net/2009/03/02/screencast-evernote-as-a-medical-students-peripheral-brain/ prompted me to look more closely at this tool. Offered in both a free and fee based version, it is a personal notebook that you can fill with documents (pdf), video, audio and links. While Google notebook and Zoho notebook offer similar features, Evernote adds synchronization between computer and cloud storage as well as the ability to run the application from a flash drive.


There is also apps for both the iPhone and iTouch to get to public folders.


There are other healthcare professionals who have been using this application for a variety of tasks. The Efficient MD blog posted a 3 part series that suggested several uses for Evernote including how it could be used as a "hybrid electronic health record" The Efficient MD - Life Hacks for Healthcare How Doctors Can Use Evernote As A Professional Memory Accessible Anywhere (Part 1 of 3) (http://efficientmd.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-doctors-can-use-evernote-as.html).


I downloaded and installed the application, created a flash drive version and saved several sites during the day. From my home computer I logged into the application and everything I had worked on from a different computer was synchronized with my home desktop.

In previous posts about Personal Learning Envirionments I have used PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/) as an example application which could serve as a repository of information and links for a variety of sites. Evernote is a serious tool to add the collection.

Here are the differences between the free and fee ($45/year) versions:

PHR security and usability

In my informatics course we have been discussing PHRs. There seems a consensus that PHRs are a good idea, but security and reliability are items of concern. I believe this technology will only increase in the future and healthcare professionals need to be aware of the issues surrounding PHRs.

Here are a few references for review and reflection:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/personal_health_records_lots_of_interest_no_users.phpThis article talks to the number PHR users and suggests that consumer motivation may also be a significant factor for relatively low rate of adoption.

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2008/12/privacy-framework-for-personal-health.htmlDr Halamka describes security standards being considered at a national level for PHRs.

http://www.usercentric.com/publications/2009/01/phr/This post compares Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. While Google has a bit of an edge, both companies have a lot to lose if their records are not secure. The partnership of Google Health with Cleveland Clinic and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital as well as the partnership between Microsoft and Kaiser Permanente seem good indicators that the systems have undergone rigorous review.

Medicare has started a PHR pilot project in Arizona and Utah. Google Health is one of the options. http://www.medicare.gov/PHR/PHRChoice.aspI'm not very concerned about the security issues, particularly if the PHR owner chooses a strong password as we discussed in class. I think motivation and consistency will be a greater problem for many who choose to create a PHR. Is some information better than none? Willl a partially completed or maintained PHR be any different than the current fragmented documentation of health issues for people who visit multiple providers?