Authors (including presenting author) :
HO SKS, LEUNG WT, CHAN HL, CHAN TS, TSOI YK, YUEN WM, LI HY, LI PU, CHAN YK, KONG HL, Woo WSS, Pang HSI, KNG PLC
Affiliation :
Department of Medicine and Geriatrics, Ruttonjee and Tang Shiu Kin Hospital
Introduction :
The primary goals of nursing education are to prepare nurses to meet diverse patients’ needs, acquire competencies to deliver safe and quality patient care, thus achieving sustainable development of quality nursing care. However, COVID subverted the social norms, new norms reshape our ways of working, including the format for in-service training. In times of social distancing, the geriatrics team of RTSKH developed a new norm for remote training – the “MiniBullet CareTips” in form of a narrative poster for its 99 nursing staff, and favorable feedback had been received.
Objectives :
1. Introduce an alternative approach to replace face-to-face training in times of social distancing.
2. Maintain the momentum of staff training and learning across the division through wide engagement of clinical nurses.
3. Enhance continuous nursing education despite of the environmental limitations.
Methodology :
As the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread in early 2020, all training programs were suspended. Putting up with the training needs of the division, the “MiniBullet CareTips” biweekly publications was established since October 2020. The publication is a case illustration in colorful eye catching poster with backup evidences on specific areas of gerontological care, such as dementia care, wound care, continence care, end of life care and so on. The essence was that a 3-10 minutes’ narration recording produced by the authors were inserted in the posters, providing a clear explanation of case scenarios as well as the embedded knowledge and skills. Making the innovation sustainable, all wards / units joined the task force by nominating nurse authors to compose the bulletin in turns, and ward managers facilitated the training dissemination. Revisions of the care tips were made easy by accessing to the department website where the posters were stored. An evaluation survey was conducted in August 2021 for staff feedback.
Result & Outcome :
A total of 24 narrative posters were developed from October 2020 to December 2021, within which 6 in Dementia care, 6 in Wound care, 4 in Continence care, 3 in End-of-life care and five others. In average, each staff have read 19 publications. 43 respondents with a median working experience of 15 years from 6 geriatrics wards/unit filled in a google form evaluation. 86%, 81.4%, 85% respondents rated a high or very high level of appreciation in the usefulness of the bulletin; the capacity of the bulletin on stimulating their interest in related topic and in its logical flow respectively. 90% and 67.5% thought that the visual effect and audio narration were of high or above quality respectively. 90% considered the amount of information presented was adequate, while 17.5% commented that the bulletins were published too frequent, 82.5% thought it was just right. 92.5% respondents would recommend it to colleagues, and 75% support the future development of training access via mobile device. In conclusion, the new adaptive initiation achieved sustainable staff development by creating a “New Normal” which overcome the constraint of social distancing; and two-way-communication needed to be explored for enhancement.
