OFFICERS
FOR 2001-2002
President
– Mike Chamberlain
President
Elect – Roanne Rogerson
Secretary
-- Ruth Sedgwick
Treasurer
-- Lorraine Heslop
BOARD
of DIRECTORS:
Eva
Daniels
Monte
Wasikenski
Joyce
Hurd
NOMINATING
COMMITTEE:
Marianne
Thines
This month's spotlight focuses on Roanne Rogerson,
our chapter's incoming president and
gracious hostess for our June 8th
potluck supper meeting!
Roanne started her surgical career as an O.R.
technician at Hartford Hospital in Hartford,
Connecticut. She told me her previous
“occupation” had been as a surfer girl
and beach
bum. I’m sure riding those waves were good
preparation for the ups and downs of
perioperative nursing.
After eight
years as an O.R. tech, she decided to pursue
her R.N., with a scholarship from Hartford
Hospital. She
graduated with her A.D.N. from Tunix
Community College in Farmington, Conn.
Roanne worked for three years in a surgical
ICU, but missed the operating room, so she
returned. Good thing too, because this was
where she met her future husband, Keith
Rogerson, an Oral Surgeon. They were married
in 1989.
In
1991, Keith had the opportunity to join a
practice in Lebanon, N.H. For a while,
Roanne held two jobs in Lebanon, one at
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and the
other at Alice Peck Day Hospital. Around
1994, she went to work exclusively for APD.
Keith and Roanne became the proud adoptive parents of
their son, Coulston, in 1999. Roanne, will
you be teaching Coulston to “shoot the
curl” and “hang ten”?
New
Hampshire Walk for Nurses
I
had the wonderful experience last month of
attending the very first New Hampshire Walk
for Nurses in Concord.
Eva
Daniels, Deb Hastings and Susan Beyea were
just a few of over 300 nurses, who completed
the five mile walk. There were nurses from
all over the state, as far north as
Littleton and as far east as Dover.
It was
interesting talking with colleagues in so
many kinds of nursing positions. Many
participants walked with their families and
many brought their dogs. It was like a
mini-Westminster Dog Show. All participants
received a t-shirt and there was plenty of
water and fruit to refresh everyone.
A great time
was had by all and next year we will do it
all again, hopefully on May 4, 2003. Please
plan to addend, you don’t have to walk,
volunteers are needed to help check people
in. Many nurses came in teams, so come on!
Let’s see your hospital represented out
here next year!
Our
web site has a section called Nurses Notes,
where we have just started a new offering.
We thought it would be helpful to
share ideas and information that will help
us in performing our jobs.
As the
need for nurses grows, we are seeing an
increase in preceptorship in the O.R.
It’s a difficult time for everyone,
the new nurse intern as well as the seasoned
nurse who has now become the teacher.
Some of the topics we want to write about may seem
obvious to many of you who have been in
perioperative nursing for years, but maybe
for others these tid-bits may shed some
light on the mysteries of how we do what we
do.
Please
bear with us as we try out this new venture
and give us feedback. This months
topic is:
|
Quite
a few years ago, our hospital
required all nurses to attend a
class on documentation given by our
hospital risk management and quality
assurance departments. They stressed
complete and accurate documentation,
giving examples of good and bad
charting.
One statement mentioned in
that class
has improved my practice….
“In a court of law, how would
you explain your practice?”
As nurses, we are patient
advocates, their voice, their
representatives, their care-givers.
We know our own strengths and
weaknesses. It is our responsibility
to make sure we attend in-services
on new equipment that we will be
responsible for running, that we are
current in ACLS, that we keep
ourselves updated on proper
procedures, policies and protocols,
learn from our own and others
experiences, share what we have
learned …in short…be the best we
can be at what we do. (Put ourselves
in the patients shoes. Would you
want the nurse you are to be taking
care of you?)
If we question ourselves,
when caring for these patients, as
if we had to explain our actions in
a court of law, our practices would
be much improved.
One example I gave a new OR
nurse recently was
“When having a
patient transfer from a
stretcher to the OR table, make sure
of four things. That the OR bed is
locked - that the stretcher brake is
on - that you stay on the stretcher
side of the patient to hold the
stretcher – that there
is some one else on the other side of the OR bed to
receive the patient. I have seen OR
tables left unlocked, stretchers
with brakes on that slide and we
never want a patient moving
onto the OR table with no one on the
other side to receive them.”
Ask yourself, if this patient
fell between the stretcher and
OR table or fell off the other side
of the table, besides harming a
patient entrusted to your care,
in a court of law, how
would you explain the fact that
you did not make sure the OR table
was locked, support the stretcher or
have someone else on the other side
of the table to receive the patient?
Lorraine Heslop
RN, CNOR
Upcoming
Events!
October 5, 2002
Concord Hospital
Susan Beyea will speak on PNDS, Documentation and Patient Safety
More
information will be coming in the Fall
September Newsletter
|
|
