We did a lot of research, so disseminating the findings on our project was not as hard as I thought it would be. We wrote everything out and basically just transformed it into a poster. Infection control in a hospital is not a difficult topic considering the things you as a health care worker could do to prevent the spread of infection are tasks everyone should be doing every day. When we realized the simple steps a health care worker needs to take in order to prevent the spread of infection through our research, disseminating our findings and creating an infographic was not all too challenging. We have yet to hear back on how the nurses on MS3 responded to our infographics and survey, but we did receive feedback from our clinical instructor.
Our clinical instructor agrees that infection control is very important in a hospital setting. She made a point to say that it is nice only having to wash your hands for 20 seconds instead of singing the “happy birthday” song to get it right, since that was the old recommendation. Under the “what are we preventing” section of our infographic, we put “C. diff” and she also thinks it would be beneficial if we were to have put C. Difficile. She also suggested that under hospital acquired infections, skin and wound infections could also be hospital acquired. Other than those critiques she really enjoyed our project and seeing what it has turned into. She also said she is teaching a clinical group there in the spring as well so she can see if it has made an impact!
Through this team project I learned how to work in a larger group of people that we had just recently met aside from the importance of infection control! Coming into an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people as a new nurse is bound to happen. Taking these skills we have learned through working with our group into the nursing world, will be very beneficial. As a group we found an issue that needed to be addressed (infection control), we researched it, and created a poster on how to improve it. The final dissemination project will be hung up on MS3 at SMHC and we did all this while being nursing students. Doing all this as a student gave me the confidence of being able to contribute to quality improvement and evidence-based practice initiatives as I enter the workforce as a new nurse. If my clinical group was on a floor for a couple weeks before choosing something to work on, I feel confident that I could make the floor I work on every day better.
As a team member, I faced obstacles at the beginning of this project. I was unable to attend the first 3 clinicals. That is when we were supposed to be figuring out what we were going to do our project on and building connections on the floor. It was difficult at first being on the outside of what was going on, however I realized that I could still do just as much. We discussed doing our project on infection control and I realized that just because I wasn’t at clinical those first 3 days does not mean I can’t do as much as them. Once I realized that I was able to build the confidence to get things moving on our project. Through this process I realized that if a due date was approaching, we have yet to discuss it, I would be one to reach out and take the lead on what we need to get done. I have realized I can be a leader, while also being part of the team.
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