Striving to make education a priority
Striving to make education a priority
Education coordinator: What I’m doing counts’
"Our leadership and our system really puts a lot of emphasis on our education as well as that of our patients and families," says Kathy Ordelt, RN-CPN, CRRN, patient and family education coordinator for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, which is comprised of two campuses, Children’s at Scottish Rite and Children’s at Egleston, as well as 16 satellite facilities throughout the metro Atlanta area.
Children’s Hospital, one of the largest pediatric facilities in the United States with 430 beds, is committed to both staff and patient education. This commitment is reflected in the name of the department that oversees education — Learning Services.
As coordinator of patient and family education, Ordelt has three main "jobs." She is in charge of inservices for staff on patient education. She teaches staff how to teach, how to write educational materials for families, and how to use the computer for patient education purposes.
Also, she is in charge of monitoring the distribution of patient and family education materials. An index of approved education resources is kept that includes commercial and in-house materials. Clinical experts write most handouts that are created in-house; however, Ordelt does the editing and makes sure the copy is in the correct format.
Her third focus is to maintain readiness for surveys conducted by the Oakbrook Terrace, IL-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. To do so, she takes the lead on the implementation of patient education standards initiated by the Joint Commission.
Ordelt has one part-time nurse that assists her in the processing of teaching sheets, working on an as-needed basis approximately eight to 16 hours a week. As one of the arms of developmental education, she reports to the director of clinical staff development, who in turn reports to the chief learning officer for Learning Services, which has about 35 employees.
A nurse for 35 years, Ordelt has worked in a variety of positions that include patient care, management, and various staff and patient/family education roles. These diverse roles have provided a good overall background that help her to provide the best education for the patients and families that use the services of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
In a recent interview with Patient Education Management, Ordelt discussed her job, her philosophy on patient education, challenges she struggles with, and the skills she has developed that helps her to do her job well. Following are the answers to the questions posed:
Question: What is your best success story?
Answer: "Abstractly, the largest amount of success that I enjoy is knowing that what I am doing counts for something. My motivation is making a difference in the life of a child because that child is my boss. That is whom I report to, essentially. Concretely, the greatest success was getting all our patient education materials on the intranet and launching the patient and family education intranet web site for our staff."
Technology has helped to make information readily available to health care staff saving time because they no longer have to go look for patient handouts in a notebook and make copies. However patient education is totally dependent upon the caregivers’ time to provide it and there is a time crunch in health care that is totally out of control, says Ordelt. She says all she can do is provide the best tools and training and hope that staff will find the time for appropriate education that includes assessment of needs and evaluation of learning.
Question: What is your area of strength?
Answer: "Organizationally I think it is the amount of importance this organization places on learning both for staff and patients and families. Personally, I think my strengths lie in motivation, team building, getting consensus, working at problems and facilitating groups. People skills are probably one of the best strengths that I have."
An entire building across the street from Learning Services is devoted to classroom space for staff education and community outreach. Learning Services coordinates the classroom space and classes.
The hands-on patient and family teaching takes place at the two hospitals and satellite centers. Developing tools for this teaching can be difficult when all parties involved do not agree. However, Ordelt is able to get people around a table or on an e-mail circuit to discuss the issues in order to reach a common goal.
Question: What lesson did you learn the hard way?
Answer: "We have physicians review all our material and it is difficult sometimes to get them to return things in a timely manner. Getting them to sign off on material is probably one of the hardest lessons to learn how to do."
To get work completed in a timely manner, Ordelt has had to learn the nuances of what works for each physician. Some want to communicate by e-mail while others instruct her to call their office manager. Each time a new physician is incorporated into the process, Ordelt must learn the doctors’ individual styles and how they like to receive information.
Question: What is your weakest link?
Answer: "I wouldn’t call it my weakest link, but my biggest challenge is translation of patient education materials. One of the things we have been committed to at Children’s is translating everything into Spanish. We are doing 100% translation for about 400 teaching sheets, all our booklets, and all the videos we produce. It is a lengthy process."
Both campuses at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta have an interpreter department and those on staff translate materials in any spare time that they have, which is not much. Therefore, Ordelt also contracts with individuals and companies outside the health care system for translation services.
Question: What is your vision for patient education for the future?
Answer: "My vision would be to have the patient and family in the driver’s seat directing their care and their education. If we could ever get good enough at equipping them with what they need to put them in the driver’s seat, then we could be the crew in the pits."
A quote from former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sums up Ordelt’s philosophy about education. He said: "There is no prescription more valuable than knowledge." If everyone in health care made knowledge a priority then patient and staff education would be of primary importance rather than something that had to be done, she says. She believes that Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta does fairly well, but there always is room for improvement.
Question: What have you done differently since your last JCAHO visit?
Answer: "If this was next year and we were under the new survey process, I would probably have a lot more to say but I think mainly it is just maintaining continual readiness. I have a patient and family Joint Commission team, and we meet quarterly and we have done so in between the last few surveys so we don’t let go we keep meeting to assess and talk about what we need to do differently or better."
The Joint Commission will next survey children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in September 2004.
Question: When trying to create and implement a new form, patient education material, or program, where do you go to get information/ideas from which to work?
Answer: "I go to a lot of sources depending on what I need. They include conferences, patient education sites on the computer, books and journal articles on patient education topics, and telephone conversations or e-mail with colleagues. It helps me to hear what other people are doing."
Sometimes when there seems to be no solution to a problem just talking with other people about it will trigger an idea, she says.
Sources
For more information about educating patients when further follow-up is needed after a screening mammogram, contact:
- Jan Robbins, RT, Mammography Coordinator, Inland Imaging, 12420 E. Mission, Spokane, WA 99216. E-mail: [email protected].
- Pam Rudmose, RN, BSN, Breast Health Nurse and Coordinator for the Multispecialty Second-Opinion Breast Cancer Clinic, Breast Health Program, OhioHealth. Grant/ Riverside North East Health Center, 6200 Cleveland Ave., Columbus, OH 43231. Telephone: (614) 566-0569. E-mail: [email protected].
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