Full Speed Ahead!

            Hey everyone! So yesterday I was finally able to pilot the data collection form, and all of our screening methods we’ve put together! We piloted the study on one elderly patient with alterations in mental status.

            I was pretty nervous at first going in there and trying to collect various data and use the screening tools for the first time! I can definitely appreciate role playing and making a script before hand now…which is something I’m going to make sure to do before next week when I go back. But hey, you can’t run without trying to crawl first, right?

            Yesterday also showed me areas on our data collection form that I need to modify to make for more fluid documenting and questioning, and rather than having 3 separate screening tools and a data collection sheet, I am going to figure out a way to consolidate all of that into one “data packet” per patient. I’ll probably start to work on the consolidation process tomorrow after I plan out how I want to do that today.

Part of our data collection is following through with the patients we collect data from and seeing where they are discharged/admitted to, which requires me to stay with the patient and monitor them and what happens to them from the time of admission until discharge; this can be a pretty long process, but the experience is invaluable because no two patients (even the ones that present the same way) are medically treated the same. The next few times that I go to the ER, I will be going at night (between 10pm-7am) so that we can get a wide variety of patient data, not only data from patients who come during the day.

            As for my experience in the ER, I absolutely loved it! The entire ER team was so welcoming and helpful! After only being in there for not even an hour, it was easy to tell that the team really is a family. Apart from collecting data from the elderly patient with alterations in cognition, I was also exposed to many emergency situations, learned some good lessons about charting, how to communicate with various members of the ER team (including the police officers and EMT personnel), and I learned a lot about how to prioritize nursing actions. I think the most important thing I learned yesterday was how to communicate with patients who are confused or delirious and how to monitor for mental status changes in those patients; this is going to be something that I can take with me throughout my nursing career no matter what field I go into.

            Another exciting thing to come out of our project is the possibility of presenting it at the NICHE Conference in Philadelphia in April of next year as well as presenting it at the UAB Expo, also in April! I never in a million years would have thought that I would be involved in something so important and groundbreaking, but I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world.

            I look forward to seeing our project grow and progress over the upcoming months and I can’t wait to see the results of everything that we’re doing! Exciting things are happening in the ER at UAB! J

 Dr. Kellie Flood and myself

Everyone working hard in Pod 3 in the ER at UAB