i joined ONIG today!

After years of postponing, an inspiration from a meeting, an internet surfing session with more reading, a plan to create a board for nursing week...

I finally decided to join ONIG.

ONIG is ONTARIO Nursing Informatics Group.

For more information on ONIG, check out their website: http://onig.on.ca/

i did it..

took the leap from clinical bedside nursing to clinical informatics. out of the comforts of the nursing union into the uncertainty of working in a contract position. I can lose my job anytime - certainly not because of incompetence. i'm talking more about if the recession continues on its warpath and the government slashes its hospital funding.

less hospital funding = layoffs (especially nurses who are not by the bedside and who are only contract).

having said all these, i'm not scared. after all, i could always go back to bedside (i'm still a nurse after all) if there are no clinical informatics opportunities in these uncertain times (though i doubt there wouldn't be...it just sucks to go through the process of looking for employment).

or maybe move to Saskatchewan or down the States. I heard Obama wants to invest more moolah to move to electronic patient records. doomsday or not, i'm heading on...

MUST BE NICE...

see related article here.

in the midst of this so-called recession and the massive taxpayer's money that has been given to some of these companies to bail them out of their sinkholes, where do these people get the nerve to pay themselves.

i wish i had a tool to zap these fat-bellied sharks out of oblivion.

and yes I care because i sympathize with all taxpayers out there whose hard-earned money even barely make it to the food table!

mames me think - why dont we all stick to the old method of saving money (i.e. piggybanks)? let's put them out of business once and for all...

CONTINUING EDUCATION

2009 is the year to start pushing my career somewhere significant.

Since I have come on as a e-doc consultant last October I have learned a great deal about building systems that will capture health information. But I have come to realize that my training and background is not enough. I need more information, more training and background information on the e-health strategies in Canada.

Some significant people have been giving me good ideas - I was training this group of nursing students about the system the other week and the teacher was a member of RNAO. She encouraged me to join. So I signed up today. and after i signed up I came across the COACH website - I signed up for the HITS course. I am excited. This is exactly what my manager was encouraging me to do.

Will post about how the HITS course went.

THINGS YOU CAN DO WHEN BORED...

i made this quiz for the users I'm training. Why didn't i think of this before (or why hasn't anyone thought of this before). anyhoo, will make my life easier...

ENHANCED VIEW TEST - Take my online quiz

CBT POST TEST - Take my online quiz

THESE TESTS HAVE QUESTIONS THAT REQUIRE YOU TO LOGIN TO THE TRAIN ENVIRONMENT, SO YOU CAN JUST WING IT IF YOU WANT...

if you want to try it out, check these links FIRST for the online computer based training modules.

enhanced view: http://www.nygh.on.ca/cernercbt/enhview.htm

CBT: http://www.nygh.on.ca/cernercbt/nursingstudents.htm

-a demonstration on NURSING INFORMATICS-

Why reflect?

One of the mandates of self-regulation in Nursing is the need to reflect on an ongoing basis. The process of reflection allows the nurse to look back on a situation encountered in the professional setting. A situation may have resulted with unresolved ethical issues, or have presentedas clinical practices done with unclear guidelines. The individual will then explore and shed light on the issue by consulting practice guidelines, journal entries, and other valid resources. Reflecting is also a part of the Quality Assurance Program (College of Nurses of Ontario) and it is one way for stakeholders to know that a nurse has taken measures to keep herself professionaly responsible - in lay terms "keep herself on top of her game".

It is both advantageous for the nurse to participate in this practice. It opens your eyes to issues and it educates you as well. Although a lot of expectations are being put on the nurses in terms of KNOWING everything, reality is there is no way of knowing everything at one point in a nurses' career. Knowledge is black and white and it is the grey areas that sometimes confounds us all, may you be a nurse or not.

So, in my career as a nurse I have reflected regularly in an informal way. And i realize that I should take note of these learnings in a more concrete way so I will have something to look back on. And who knows when I am going to get called in by CNO (randomly) to see if I have been doing my part in maintaining my reflective practice.

That is why I am starting this blog so that I can keep records of my professional reflections and at the same time share my stories to those are interested. And of course, comments and discussions are always welcome...