CLINICAL NURSING EDUCATION UNIT

The medical college hospital, Kottayam has around three thousand staffs working in different sections on permanent or temporary basis. In the clinical side MCH have around 1000 nurses and 700 auxiliary staffs including temporary workers. The addition of different specialized departments and the increasing patient load every year made the administrators to foresee the need for further training and education of staff on specialized care. With this perspective, it was decided to start in-service nursing education to the existing staffs. Hence, 2018 onwards the clinical nursing education unit functions with two full time staff.

Functions

Since 2019 July 17th the unit functions with two full time staff and a facilitator from teaching side. The activities are timely reported directly to superintendent and chief nursing officer. In collaboration with medical education unit, quality improvement cell and infection control team, the unit carry out different trainings and suggest practice modifications to improve the quality of care. The following members are working in the unit now.

• Chief Co-ordinator – Mrs. Smitha S , Nursing Officer MCH Kottayam
• Assistant Co-ordinator – Mrs. Suma Jose, Nursing Officer MCH Kottayam
• Facilitator – Mr. Ajeesh, Assistant Professor, Govt College of Nursing, Kottayam

Major Activities

• Compulsory trainings
  • Compulsory training on basic life support and advanced cardiac life support was started from 4th September 2018. Utilizing 18 one-day programs winded up by October 2018, training was extended to 815 nurses.
  • Compulsory training on ‘infection control and patient safety’ to nurses and auxiliary staffs in clinical side was conducted to improve the quality of care to be delivered and it was extended to 1452 staffs.
  • Compulsory training on Fire and safety to all staffs of MCH Kottayam and is still continuing. Till now we have covered the entire security staff, lift operators and senior nursing officers. Then we have covered the whole staff in gynecology, cardiology and casualty block and now it is running for the next block.
• Occupational safety programme:
  • CNEU launched ‘Occupational safety Programme’ for all staffs of MCH, Kottayam on 6th august 2019 to ensure hepatitis B vaccination coverage. In this programme routine blood investigations, hepatitis B status assessment, anti HBSAg titre estimation, medical check up & hepatitis B vaccination are done for participants and also provided vaccination card and health record for employees. The programme is still going on and till the date CNEU has covered 1480 persons. (including nurses, auxiliary workers, technicians and other categories of staffs.)
• Covid related trainings:
  • CNEU is conducted COVID 19 outbreak related education from 03/02/2019 and covered topics like safe use of PPE, IPC guidelines, intensive management of patients with covid 19 in three levels. With 259 sessions CNEU have covered 4417 participants. Besides classroom educations, hands on training sessions are also arranged in isolation areas.
• Induction training
  • For newly appointed nurses and auxiliary workers we are giving basic orientation as per the concern and is going on.
• Public education
  • Every month a health day observation with awareness program are conducted for staff and public in and out of the campus, utilizing nursing students posted in the MCH
  • A system of ward education- one staff education sessions and one public education sessions every month, in each area is established.
• Research works: In collaboration with Dr, Sajithkumar, HOD, Infectious Disease Unit, CNEU took part in two research projects, for which data is collected during occupational safety programme
  • ‘Knowledge and awareness status of health care providers regarding transmission of hospital acquired infections and infection control practices’
  • Hepatitis B immunization status of health care providers in Government Medical college Kottayam.
• Laqshya related training
  • As a part of Laqshya certification programme we have conducted trainings for all the staff from gynecology department including doctors, nurses, auxiliary staff and other staff regarding basic life support, hospital infection prevention. For doctors and nurses we have also conducted advanced cardiac life support training. We could do the retraining sessions for the surveillance assessment also.
• Training on stroke
  • As our hospital has started the stroke unit we have coordinated a training to all the nursing staffs working in the emergency department.
• Training on organ donation
  • For promoting the organ donation in our hospital, we have initiated a training programme for the ICU nurses and emergency nurses regarding the organ donation procedures.
• Training related to NABH, NQAS and Kayakalp
  • CNEU has started the training programmes for all the staffs of MCH Kottayam for the NABH and other accreditation process.
• MBFHI related training CNEU conducted several training sessions for the MBFHI accreditation process for all staff in the gynaecology block and ICH staff.
• NTEP Sensitization Programme : CNEU is regularly giving separate NTEP sensitization class for nursing staff and supporting staff on monthly basis.
• Need based classes and training for all categories of staff: As per the needs identified we arrange the training on the related topics for the concerned staff.
• Impact of CNEU activities
  • The newly appointed staffs are now well aware of their role in MCH and the senior nurses are capable of correcting their practices and keep record of it.
  • The classes delivered on infection control and patient safety made drastic changes in maintaining proper sterile practices, waste segregation and preventing nosocomial infections and ensuring patient safety.
  • Through clinical teachings, overall awareness of the nurses improved and this reflected positively in patient care.
  • Regular patient teaching in wards create awareness among patients and bystanders about healthy practices.
  • The system of maintaining proper records and reports are reinforced.
  • The hand hygiene audit training empowered the nurses to monitor all health care staff in this regard. This made considerable changes in hand hygiene practices
  • Through Occupational safety programme, unit could identify many ailments among the staffs and by the end of the programme MCH Kottayam will achieve complete hepatitis B vaccination coverage.
  • By providing individual training record to every nursing staff and supporting staff we could easily identify the details of the training attended by the staff at a glance.

Our major strength is strong support from the superintendent and the nurse administrators. We are moving forward for the betterment of clinical practice and fame of MCH, Kottayam and we feel proud to be the part of the MCH Kottayam.