Redefining the future in pediatric emergency nursing education of a low middle income country, Pakistan

24^th World Nurse Practitioners & Healthcare Congress

June 25-27, 2018 Dubai, UAE

Shagufta

Aga Khan University Hospital, Pakistan

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Introduction & Purpose: Child Life Foundation (CLF) operates three pediatric emergency rooms in public sector hospitals of Karachi and treating one million children every year. The three emergency rooms serve around 1200-1300 pediatric patients per day which are managed by nursing staff and physicians having different years of experiences, knowledge and skills. The nursing care is provided by registered nurses, community nurses, nursing attendant and pediatric technicians. As working in these overcrowded emergency rooms is a challenge in itself, which required continuous monitoring and evaluation of nursing competency skills. Therefore, CLF developed an in-house nursing certificate course for their nursing staff to improve their emergency room nursing competencies, translate their knowledge and skills into practice to share the experience of developing a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Certificate of Nursing (PEMCN) course. The basic goal of this course is to train nurses who provide urgent and emergency care to pediatric patients and their families. Nursing care includes health care facilitation through proper triaging, direct patient assessment, disease recognition and stabilization by applying systematic approach. Method: It is a 10 hours certified course started in January 2017. It is facilitated by a pediatric emergency physician and a nursing instructor. The course is based on an 8 hour classroom teaching and 2 hour hands-on-training on site. The classroom teaching consists of 5 series of lectures with pre-test and post-test before and after each session respectively. These didactic session consists of patient assessment at triage, pediatric assessment triangle, primary and secondary survey. It also includes sessions on patient medication, pharmacy mathematics, nursing documentation, patient counseling and nursing procedures. The students receive their pre-reading material one-week before the session and at the end of the classroom teaching they have to submit the feedback for the session. The hands-on-training is provided in emergency rooms. The nursing instructor in this emergency room gives 2 hours of one to one hands-on practical knowledge and shares their observations and addresses their questions. The instructor observes the candidates on procedures, patient monitoring, enteral tubes placements, oxygen administration techniques, medication labeling and nursing documentation. At the end of the training they are assessed by a theory assessment of 50 questions and a bedside assessment according to pre-defined nursing competencies checklist. To qualify each session they need to achieve more than 70% marks in the grand test day. Result: The total of 73 nurses enrolled for PEMCN and out of which 53 nurses passed the course with more than 70% marks in first attempt. 11 nurses had taken the re-take and only 2 nurses were unable to qualify in the second attempt. Therefore, 88% of the candidate passed the course with more than 70% marks and on average passing rate was 80%. Conclusion: In summary, PEMCN in-house certification short courses will improve knowledge of our emergency room nursing staff and ultimately improve the emergency care of children of Pakistan.

Biography :

Shagufta is an Emergency Care Nurse since more than 7 years. She is also an Assistant Head Nurse at Department of Emergency Medicine at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. She has also completed her Diploma in Nursing in 2007 and Diploma in Midwifery in 2008 from Murshid Hospital and Health Care Center. She has then graduated with a Post RN BSCN degree from Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences in 2015. She later joined Child Life Foundation as Clinical Nurse Instructor in 2016.

E-mail: shaguftaara13@yahoo.com