Showing posts with label CNSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNSA. Show all posts
Saturday, February 26, 2011
You can tell when you love something...
Because working on it consumes your thoughts entirely. I have been working on the CNSA website, forums, and social media pretty much non-stop since I got admin rights. I just LOVE it. I love playing with the code (although, admittedly, I am entirely self-taught and barely know anything), I love improving the site nav and content, and I LOVE seeing the numbers climb after I installed Site Meter Pro.
I had some struggles with the old forum software (phpBB 2.x) and not having access to the database so I could mod the registration page to at least semi-prevent spambot registrations. I ended up manually adding approved posters to a group, and then giving that group permission to post. It's not ideal and I am worried I may have killed the forums, but they were pretty much dead anyway. One page worth of posts in a year...
I sent emails to the CNSA web host, Director Communications, and President of CNSA to try and persuade them to upgrade the entire site platform to vBulletin. From what I've seen, people either love it or hate it, and the people who hate it seem to be developers who are looking for ++intensive modifications, which doesn't affect me. I played with a demo version of the admin panel and I am pleased with vBulletin's community-centric nature. I WANT Regional Executives to be able to upload their own content and maintain a web presence for their community. I want the BoD to maintain blogs and reach out to the members. I want people to visit cnsa.ca and want to BE a member.
I'm also intrigued by the calendar functions, the events manager (hugely important for an organization which exists primarily through conferences), and social networking integration such as Facebook Connect. If we make it easy for our members to get involved and stay involved, they might actually take an interest in it - particularly those members (such as myself) who live in areas where CNSA has no physical presence.
Anyway, Reading Week is drawing to a close and I am scrambling to finish the major adjustments to the website so that, by Monday, I have my head back in the clinicals game ;)
I had some struggles with the old forum software (phpBB 2.x) and not having access to the database so I could mod the registration page to at least semi-prevent spambot registrations. I ended up manually adding approved posters to a group, and then giving that group permission to post. It's not ideal and I am worried I may have killed the forums, but they were pretty much dead anyway. One page worth of posts in a year...
I sent emails to the CNSA web host, Director Communications, and President of CNSA to try and persuade them to upgrade the entire site platform to vBulletin. From what I've seen, people either love it or hate it, and the people who hate it seem to be developers who are looking for ++intensive modifications, which doesn't affect me. I played with a demo version of the admin panel and I am pleased with vBulletin's community-centric nature. I WANT Regional Executives to be able to upload their own content and maintain a web presence for their community. I want the BoD to maintain blogs and reach out to the members. I want people to visit cnsa.ca and want to BE a member.
I'm also intrigued by the calendar functions, the events manager (hugely important for an organization which exists primarily through conferences), and social networking integration such as Facebook Connect. If we make it easy for our members to get involved and stay involved, they might actually take an interest in it - particularly those members (such as myself) who live in areas where CNSA has no physical presence.
Anyway, Reading Week is drawing to a close and I am scrambling to finish the major adjustments to the website so that, by Monday, I have my head back in the clinicals game ;)
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
CNSA.ca - tell me what you think
I got the keys last night to the CNSA.ca website so that I could finally get started in my new role as Informatics Officer. One of the big jobs I see is improving the navigability, content, and transparency of the CNSA website. My term hasn't officially started yet (it begins on April 1) so I am just puttering around until the new Board of Directors begin their terms and I can harass them for additional content.
I would really appreciate if you could take a little mosey over there and tell me what you think about the current website. Be honest and give me some constructive feedback. I won't be offended - I didn't make it :) But I am looking to improve it.
It's a good thing it's Reading Week right now. I get so excited over web projects that I tend to stay up all night working and forget other commitments.... wait, did I feed my bird today?? ;)
I would really appreciate if you could take a little mosey over there and tell me what you think about the current website. Be honest and give me some constructive feedback. I won't be offended - I didn't make it :) But I am looking to improve it.
It's a good thing it's Reading Week right now. I get so excited over web projects that I tend to stay up all night working and forget other commitments.... wait, did I feed my bird today?? ;)
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Day 1: Vascular Surgery, and other stuff
Yesterday was my orientation onto the new unit, new instructor, new everything. It can be pretty challenging to change gears like we do as we move from one rotation immediately into the next. Especially given the circumstances from the last instructor, I found the adjustment a little difficult, but I think once I hit my stride with my own pt load I will be okay.
I wasn't sure what to expect with this unit, since my last surgery rotation was orthopedics. I think there will be a lot of similarities. Older patient population, multiple comorbidities, people who are more or less paying the price for a lifetime of unhealthy choices. Sure makes me re-evaluate my own healthy habits. There are amputations, bypasses, carotid endarterectomies, a whole plethora of vascular surgeries I don't yet know about, and general surgery.
My precepting nurse today was a new grad herself, class of 2010. I shadowed her and rounded with her on her 4 patients, getting a feel for the unit's flow and routine. I was pleased to see the teamwork dynamic on the unit - an AWESOME change from my maternity rotation, where the floor had some serious politics that they made no attempt to hide. Like the day I had to request a new nurse because mine spent the entire morning griping to me about other nurses and work environment instead of letting me care for my assigned patients - wow, awkward.
It was nice having a newer nurse to shadow today. It helps to give me a visual on where I would like to be when I graduate. Usually, when I shadow really experienced nurses, I get blown away by how much they know and what they know to expect. It can be intimidating when they are connecting dots long before the questions have even formed in my brain!
Today's patients included a middle-aged woman with a brand new ileostomy, a senior who'd had her gangrenous leg amputated, a patient with a gianormous gallstone and pancreatic issues, and a man in his 60s who was about a week post-op from a fem-pop bypass.
The unit is pretty old-school in terms of layout; it is a horseshoe with rooms around the perimeter and the nursing station at the opening. Being oldschool, there isn't really anywhere to chart comfortably or congregate with other students to do research. I got pretty used to that on my last rotation - couldn't go 10 feet without running into a charting station complete with computer and task chair :)
I am feeling good about this rotation EXCEPT my instructor will be leaving in a few weeks and will be replaced by someone, but we don't know who. So my current instructor will be doing my midterm evaluation and then a new instructor will be doing my final. This could play in my favor, as I have time to find my feet and then the new instructor will come in and see me being awesome, or it could go the other way.
I am looking forward to my leave of absence from my job; I will be off March-April so I can focus exclusively on clinical. This will be a first for me and I intend to take full advantage of it in terms of home study and knowing my stuff - I should get another 20-25 hours per week to myself! Unfortunately I will be completely broke for 2 months. :(
In other news, I attended my STTI chapter's executive meeting to offer my assistance with maintaining a web presence via The Circle. This kind of evolved into them asking me to give a presentation at the next meeting to show them how to use it. Ironically, the next item on the meeting agenda was succession planning. IMO, the single best way to recruit my digital generation into any role is to create accessible information and make it easy to become involved. Honestly, the first thing I did when I got invited to STTI was go to the website. Same with CNSA. Same with Alberta Health Services. I am probably a little more gung-ho than the average student in terms of finding information, and a little ballsy when it comes to getting involved, and I think more people would love to get involved if the process of becoming involved was straightforward and clear.
I believe we are at an awkward stage in terms of information accessibility; a lot of the areas in senior management that are responsible for coordinating information grew up in the era of newsletters and paper applications. Information was accessed days or weeks from the initial request in terms of fax or mail or answering machine. What you knew was directly related to who you knew, and "in person" was often a requirement. However, these outdated methods of Finding Out no longer meet our expectations. We want to find information in seconds. This dichotomy is causing tension between old methodology and what we've come to expect from online resources. It's no one's fault, of course, that we are taking our time getting information more freely accessible - healthcare is a little unique in terms of extremely important confidentiality issues. I definitely see a huge potential for information distributed almost exclusively through digital media. There really is no reason to have paper anything (unless you live in Canada and have paid attention to recent events involving Usage-Based Billing). It is my hope that I can do my part through CNSA and STTI Mu Sigma to encourage freely accessible information and improve involvement in these organizations.
By the way - I don't know if I mentioned it, but I was elected into an informatics position on the Board of Directors of CNSA! It is currently an Officer position which reports to Director of Communications, but informatics is a massive role in its own right and I see potential for the position could be expanded to Director of Informatics at the next National Assembly. Obviously it will take a whole lot of work on my part to make that happen. I am really excited about this opportunity. The website is going to improve a lot over the next year. It needs improved navigability, richer content, frequent updates, CNSA projects and involvement, and clear role descriptions for the BoD. There are some lacklustre forums on there which need better organization and spam filtering. There are opportunities for greater integration with CNA's NurseONE (I met the project lead at the conference) and hopefully nursingideas.ca. I have a lot of ideas and am hoping to get together soon with the webmaster to discuss the back end process for the website. My term doesn't officially begin until April 1 so no rush.
Wow, I had a lot more to say than I thought. I am so, so, so excited about all these possibilities. Going to bed with visions of awesome, engaging, easy-to-navigate websites dancing in my head. Second RN-shadowing shift tomorrow!
I wasn't sure what to expect with this unit, since my last surgery rotation was orthopedics. I think there will be a lot of similarities. Older patient population, multiple comorbidities, people who are more or less paying the price for a lifetime of unhealthy choices. Sure makes me re-evaluate my own healthy habits. There are amputations, bypasses, carotid endarterectomies, a whole plethora of vascular surgeries I don't yet know about, and general surgery.
My precepting nurse today was a new grad herself, class of 2010. I shadowed her and rounded with her on her 4 patients, getting a feel for the unit's flow and routine. I was pleased to see the teamwork dynamic on the unit - an AWESOME change from my maternity rotation, where the floor had some serious politics that they made no attempt to hide. Like the day I had to request a new nurse because mine spent the entire morning griping to me about other nurses and work environment instead of letting me care for my assigned patients - wow, awkward.
It was nice having a newer nurse to shadow today. It helps to give me a visual on where I would like to be when I graduate. Usually, when I shadow really experienced nurses, I get blown away by how much they know and what they know to expect. It can be intimidating when they are connecting dots long before the questions have even formed in my brain!
Today's patients included a middle-aged woman with a brand new ileostomy, a senior who'd had her gangrenous leg amputated, a patient with a gianormous gallstone and pancreatic issues, and a man in his 60s who was about a week post-op from a fem-pop bypass.
The unit is pretty old-school in terms of layout; it is a horseshoe with rooms around the perimeter and the nursing station at the opening. Being oldschool, there isn't really anywhere to chart comfortably or congregate with other students to do research. I got pretty used to that on my last rotation - couldn't go 10 feet without running into a charting station complete with computer and task chair :)
I am feeling good about this rotation EXCEPT my instructor will be leaving in a few weeks and will be replaced by someone, but we don't know who. So my current instructor will be doing my midterm evaluation and then a new instructor will be doing my final. This could play in my favor, as I have time to find my feet and then the new instructor will come in and see me being awesome, or it could go the other way.
I am looking forward to my leave of absence from my job; I will be off March-April so I can focus exclusively on clinical. This will be a first for me and I intend to take full advantage of it in terms of home study and knowing my stuff - I should get another 20-25 hours per week to myself! Unfortunately I will be completely broke for 2 months. :(
In other news, I attended my STTI chapter's executive meeting to offer my assistance with maintaining a web presence via The Circle. This kind of evolved into them asking me to give a presentation at the next meeting to show them how to use it. Ironically, the next item on the meeting agenda was succession planning. IMO, the single best way to recruit my digital generation into any role is to create accessible information and make it easy to become involved. Honestly, the first thing I did when I got invited to STTI was go to the website. Same with CNSA. Same with Alberta Health Services. I am probably a little more gung-ho than the average student in terms of finding information, and a little ballsy when it comes to getting involved, and I think more people would love to get involved if the process of becoming involved was straightforward and clear.
I believe we are at an awkward stage in terms of information accessibility; a lot of the areas in senior management that are responsible for coordinating information grew up in the era of newsletters and paper applications. Information was accessed days or weeks from the initial request in terms of fax or mail or answering machine. What you knew was directly related to who you knew, and "in person" was often a requirement. However, these outdated methods of Finding Out no longer meet our expectations. We want to find information in seconds. This dichotomy is causing tension between old methodology and what we've come to expect from online resources. It's no one's fault, of course, that we are taking our time getting information more freely accessible - healthcare is a little unique in terms of extremely important confidentiality issues. I definitely see a huge potential for information distributed almost exclusively through digital media. There really is no reason to have paper anything (unless you live in Canada and have paid attention to recent events involving Usage-Based Billing). It is my hope that I can do my part through CNSA and STTI Mu Sigma to encourage freely accessible information and improve involvement in these organizations.
By the way - I don't know if I mentioned it, but I was elected into an informatics position on the Board of Directors of CNSA! It is currently an Officer position which reports to Director of Communications, but informatics is a massive role in its own right and I see potential for the position could be expanded to Director of Informatics at the next National Assembly. Obviously it will take a whole lot of work on my part to make that happen. I am really excited about this opportunity. The website is going to improve a lot over the next year. It needs improved navigability, richer content, frequent updates, CNSA projects and involvement, and clear role descriptions for the BoD. There are some lacklustre forums on there which need better organization and spam filtering. There are opportunities for greater integration with CNA's NurseONE (I met the project lead at the conference) and hopefully nursingideas.ca. I have a lot of ideas and am hoping to get together soon with the webmaster to discuss the back end process for the website. My term doesn't officially begin until April 1 so no rush.
Wow, I had a lot more to say than I thought. I am so, so, so excited about all these possibilities. Going to bed with visions of awesome, engaging, easy-to-navigate websites dancing in my head. Second RN-shadowing shift tomorrow!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
We came, we saw, we debated
Wow, arguing for privately funded/delivered healthcare in a crowd full of nurses (and a model that I don't personally ascribe to) was probably the hardest thing I've done in school. But we went out there, we stirred the pot, we pissed people off, and people gave us death stares- but we defended it with all our hearts and received many congrats from attendees on our convincing arguments. We even earned a shout out from Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), who said we deserved academic credit for our work!! Wow, it was so intense. I loved it and it terrified me. More updates to follow once I am on my home computer :)
The view from our podium:
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
The view from our podium:
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
So far, they are feeding us
Noms galore! There are so many people here and it hasn't even officially started yet! We will be rehearsing soon and then later a wine & cheese charity auction. Rumor has it there's an iPad up for grabs.... I was just getting a little thoughtful over how 4 years ago today, nursing school was a pipe dream for me, and here I am now sitting with hundreds of like-minded future nurses in a profession I have become so passionate about. Life is amazing like that, I guess :)
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
En route to CNSA National Conference
This past weekend was a total whirlwind, finishing up a CFAM assessment on my patient family, getting ready for the Big Debate, and getting absolutely slammed at work due to the huge snowfall we got this month.
I just wanted to check in and say I am still working on that post I mentioned, and OMG I'm in Toronto!!!
Will keep you posted on what the conference is all about. Stay tuned :)
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
I just wanted to check in and say I am still working on that post I mentioned, and OMG I'm in Toronto!!!
Will keep you posted on what the conference is all about. Stay tuned :)
-- from the cellular desk of undergrad RN
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The Ten Year Rule
I don't know if I have previously shared one of my guiding life philosophies, but I will now.
(Am I the only person out there with actually-in-words life philosophies? lol)
One of my favorite principles that I use when making tough decisions is my "Ten Year Rule" - hence known as TYR. Meaning, ten years from now, what will I wish I had done?
I've put this guiding principle to use many times in my life, usually to justify spending or saving money, or taking risks on new opportunities, but sometimes to remember the Bigger Picture. I used it when I abruptly left my life in Alberta for the opportunity to live in Ontario, grooming at Millar Brooke. TYR when I had the choice of moving back to Alberta or to Scotland. When I had to decide between pursuing graphic design or upgrading my high school on the off chance I could get into Nursing - TYR.
More recently - using some of my student loan money to go to Thailand? TYR. Scuba certification, bungee jumping, facing my biggest fears. TYR.
Today I faced a dilemma. I have been emailing like a madwoman trying to get clearance from my school to attend the conference in January; trouble being, of course, that it's super close to Christmas break and no one seems to be in the office, and CNSA wants me to book my flight ASAP.
I got a reply from the faculty stating that basically
a) they supported me going, but
b) it was going to screw me in terms of clinical hours and could ultimately affect my grade.
So that's pretty disappointing. It's not like I'm OCD about maxing out my GPA. I'm really not. As long as I get a pleasant 3.3-3.5, I'm a happy girl. Enough for grad school is enough for me. But just the idea of KNOWING that I could be throwing away marks in exchange for the opportunity to attend the conference is pretty tough. I've been thinking hard about it since I found out the news.
Then, today, we had our first teleconference and talked about the presentation. I recognized one of the voices on the line - it was one of the coordinators at the conference I went to in October! He was on the team as well. I was even more excited than before. He is the kind of person who speaks and people listen. I just know he's going great places in Nursing and I'm excited to be on the team with him. Then I realized that if this was the calibre of people on the team, I am even more honored to be a part of it.
Thus, the Ten Year Rule.
Ten years from now, will I be lamenting the loss of a few tenths of a grade point in one class?
Or will I be disappointed that I missed out on an opportunity to present to hundreds of peers and respected leaders of my profession?
With TYR, as always, the choice is obvious.
I am, however, hoping to kiss sufficient ass to make up for my 4 days of clinical absence....
Oh! I found out that I will be going to an inner-city hospital for my L&D rotation with two of my best friends. Orientation on Jan 5!!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Christmas came a little early
After a FANTASTIC decompression in the sun (and a pretty fantastic sunburn, might I add), a red eye flight, and return to the snowy northern wastes, I checked my email to find the following -
Aaaaannnnnnnd cue heart palpitations. There are only 5 of us on the team. For the WHOLE COUNTRY. zomg. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one from Alberta.
So now I realized that I actually will have to roll up my sleeves and make this trip happen, aka booking even more time off work, sending my regrets to the STTI induction, and pleading my case with the school faculty as I would be missing 4 days of L&D clinical*.
And practice, practice, practice what I am going to say, so that awful presentation Will. Not. Be. Repeated.
In front of the likes of 600+ CNSA members, Tilda Shalof, and Jean Watson, no less!!
* I think I sent a pretty compelling argument to the faculty. I may have indicated that the academic nature of the conference should be valid course credit. I also may have indicated that it would be a pretty sweet name drop to my fairly-recently-accredited university.
** I also checked all of my final course grades and found that I kicked ass on my finals. Especially my Nursing/Acutely Ill course, which was the one I really cared about. Booya!
Congratulations,
You have been chosen to be a part of the 2011 CNSA national conference's national team!
Aaaaannnnnnnd cue heart palpitations. There are only 5 of us on the team. For the WHOLE COUNTRY. zomg. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one from Alberta.
So now I realized that I actually will have to roll up my sleeves and make this trip happen, aka booking even more time off work, sending my regrets to the STTI induction, and pleading my case with the school faculty as I would be missing 4 days of L&D clinical*.
And practice, practice, practice what I am going to say, so that awful presentation Will. Not. Be. Repeated.
In front of the likes of 600+ CNSA members, Tilda Shalof, and Jean Watson, no less!!
* I think I sent a pretty compelling argument to the faculty. I may have indicated that the academic nature of the conference should be valid course credit. I also may have indicated that it would be a pretty sweet name drop to my fairly-recently-accredited university.
** I also checked all of my final course grades and found that I kicked ass on my finals. Especially my Nursing/Acutely Ill course, which was the one I really cared about. Booya!
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