ENA Emergency Nurses Association

February 7, 2006 - Ninth Edition

STATE LEADERS ORIENTATION - SHARING OF IDEAS

It was wonderful to see more than 100 state leaders at the State Leaders Orientation Meeting in December. Some great ideas came out of that meeting:

REVERIFICATION OF PROVIDER STATUS AT INSTRUCTOR COURSE
Several state leaders offered successful strategies for facilitating the reverification of Provider status prior to an Instructor course. They included:

When participants are local, some Course Directors handle the reverification testing the evening before the Instructor class.
When there is multiple Faculty available, some Course Directors have a small group of attendees take the written test first, while one or more groups are involved with the skill station testing. As each attendee passes one area, they rotate to the other
Where two Faculty are available, some Course Directors split the attendees into two groups. One starts on the written test first, and the other on the skill station testing. When both groups are completed, they switch.
When participants are traveling quite a distance to the Instructor course, some Course Directors have asked another Course Director that is local to the participant, to test the participant prior to their course. Although this has been helpful in some situations, it is not always easy to coordinate receiving the testing paperwork, which is necessary to include with the post course materials.

SUGGESTIONS MADE FOR THE NEW AMS DATABASE SYSTEM
ENA will soon begin the design phase of a new initiative to replace ENA�s existing database. Some suggestions from the State Leaders meeting that will be included in our design discussions are:

An automatic e-mail to the State Chairperson confirming each course application processed for their state.
A list of Faculty on the ENA website.
A more streamlined invoice process.
On-line course application process.

If you have any other suggestions, we want to hear them. Please e-mail Maureen Howard at mhoward@ena.org

REMINDER TO SEND IN POST COURSE MATERIALS PROMPTLY
Please remember to send in all post course materials within 30 days of your course. This enables us to finalize all processing and ensure that the Instructors receive the teaching credit they are due. This will also keep all QA evaluation information up to date. Thanks to the many, many Course Directors who are consistently sending in those materials on a timely basis!

CONGRATULATIONS PORTUGAL
We want to acknowledge the work of the Associacao Portuguesa de Enfermeiros de Urgencia. This Portuguese association of emergency nurses has been responsible for the dissemination of TNCC throughout Portugal. Working with a small corps of dedicated instructors, they have managed to conduct more than 30 courses since the original introduction of the course in 2002. TNCC is fast becoming the standard in all of Portugal.

Most recently, the association hosted another group of dedicated ENA members, Rene� Holleran, Ray Bennett, Kathy Emde and Rebecca Steinmann who traveled to Porto, Portugal to introduce ENPC. ENA�s Education Officer, Donna Massey and Chief Financial Officer, Marlene Halperin also traveled to Porto with the group. While there may be practice differences between Portugal and the United States, we all agreed that we share the same commitment to better patient care through teaching and disseminating both TNCC and ENPC.

Topic ideas for future issues and feedback are welcome at CourseBytes@ena.org. If you know of anyone who should be receiving this e-mail but is not, please ask them to e-mail us at CourseBytes@ena.org with their name, current home address and home and work e-mail addresses.