Give staff incentives for reading
Give staff incentives for reading
Home health care changes so quickly, and sometimes the best way for nurses to keep up with the changes is by reading articles. But when can home care nurses find the time?
CareOne Home Health of Savannah, GA, has encouraged staff nurses to make reading a priority by giving them credit for an hour’s inservice if they read a lengthy article and answer a few questions about it.
Pat Ehsanipoor, RN, MSN, staff development manager, will choose an article each month about home care and then write down a few simple questions that could only be answered by someone who has read the entire piece.
"I go to the library and go through the literature, sometimes getting information from a home care journal," Ehsanipoor says.
"I give them one fairly lengthy article or two short articles for about 45 minutes of reading and 15 minutes of answering questions," she says.
Although nurses receive an hour on inservice credit, the credit isn’t part of any mandatory requirement. "It’s for their own professional growth," Ehsanipoor explains. "They do this on their own."
About five to 10 nurses read the articles each month, she says. "We’ve been doing this since early 1996, and I feel like we’ve gotten a good response."
[Billie Davis, BSN, MED, staff development coordinator, and Debra Cheney, RN, clinical liaison, can be reached at Georgia Baptist Home Care Services, 1590 Adamson Parkway, Suite 310, Morrow, GA 30260, or by calling (770) 961-2195.
Pat Ehsanipoor, RN, MSN, staff development manager, can be reached at CareOne Home Health, 450 Mall Blvd., Savannah, GA 31406, or by calling (912) 350-6100.
To contribute to Tips from the Field, contact Melinda Young, editor of Homecare Education Management, at (864) 233-1163 or by fax at (864) 271-6163.]
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