The Pathology Core Lab staff had an exciting time sharing in the Department of Medicine’s Annual Nurses Review this year. After an earlier effort led by the Core Lab’s “Suspect Results Investigation” Workgroup and its Quality Assurance team to work with the Medicine floors to reduce the number of contaminated specimens, an invitation was extended to the Core Lab to participate in their Annual Nurses Review.
The Department of Medicine is the only department at Johns Hopkins Hospital that conducts their Annual Nurses Competency in the form of a fair. The event stretches over six days in the month of October, starting October 1st and 2nd, and every other Thursday and Friday in October. The educational event consists of lectures from equipment vendors and tables set up for teaching, demos, competency reviews and to facilitate questions from nurses.
With only four weeks to prepare for the event, no time was wasted as Core Lab Leadership got into action! The theme would be “Life of the Specimen.” Teams were immediately formed to cover topics for each table:
- Collection – led by Lois Tissue and Dr. Ventzi Hristova
- Requisitions – led by Rhonda Cole
- Labelling and Transportation – led by Judy Frazier and Jane Tolentino
- Customer Service – led by Kevin Martin and Dr. Allison Chambliss
- Laboratory – led by Danna Anderson and Pam Jarrar
- Patient-Centered Care – led by Christine Hostetter
Team leaders utilized lab staff who were interested in sharing best practices of the pre-analytical and post-analytical processes. The “Laboratory” was a three-minute slide show by Danna Anderson and Pam Jarrar with a great depiction of the Core Lab. Teaching took place in the form of games, demos, fun quizzes, and great explanations of lab processes by the Lab staff.
The nurses were very engaged, participated and listened keenly to explanations by the Lab staff. Approximately 75 nurses and some clinical technician students signed up for tours of the Core Lab, which will begin December-January.
Nurses’ written comments included:
“Thank you for being here! Very helpful!”
“Great job! Very informative”
“Great & very touching stories!”
“Put slideshow on website.”
“You all have given me a whole new understanding… a better understanding of the importance of what you do…”
“Great having Lab as part of our annual updates this year!”
“This was very helpful!”
“The phlebotomy, lab draw, specimen/tube tables – everything was very helpful.”
Below are some photos from the Fair:
The Core Lab and Pathology hope to continue such collaboration with Nursing with the goal that this will improve our processes, quality of care, and provide a safer environment for our patients.
Lona Rose Small, MT (ASCP)
Quality Assurance Specialist
Core and Specialty Laboratories
Pathology Department
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore, Maryland