Nurses believe medical errors could be reduced if the medical devices hospitals rely on for testing, monitoring, and treating patients could seamlessly share information, according to the results of a national survey of more than 500 nurses conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of the Gary and Mary West Health Institute.
Each year, it is estimated that more than 400,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors. This not only takes an enormous emotional toll on families and friends, but also places a heavy economic burden on the nation—an estimated trillion dollars or higher. As hospitals wage a war on error, there is growing appreciation that medical devices, while individually safe and effective at improving care and saving lives, can create risks for patients and challenges for clinicians when not seamlessly connected.
According to the survey, half of these nurses said they witnessed a medical error resulting from a lack of coordination among medical devices in a hospital setting. Devices include everything from infusion pumps, ventilators, pulse oximeters, and blood pressure cuffs to electronic health records. The weighted survey was conducted online from January 7–16, 2015, and included 526 nurses (credentialed at RN or higher and with an education of BSN or higher) who work full–time in a non–school setting.
Among these nurses, three in five (60%) said medical errors could be significantly reduced if medical devices were connected and shared data with each other automatically. This problem could be addressed by the widespread adoption of open communications standards that allow for the safe and secure exchange of data.
“Nurses are the front line of patient care and have an unrivaled ability to identify and address problems at the intersection of patients and technology,” says Dr. Joseph Smith, West Health Institute’s chief medical and science officer. “The survey helps show how much of a nurse’s time could be better spent in direct care of patients and families, and how errors could be potentially avoided if medical devices, which have been so successful at improving patient care, were able to take the next step and seamlessly share critical information around the patient’s bedside.”
Medical device interoperability, the ability to safely share health information across various technologies and systems, could provide important benefits such as enhanced patient safety and better clinical outcomes at a lower cost. The West Health Institute has estimated that a system of connected devices could potentially save more than $30 billion each year by reducing redundant testing, manual data entry, and transcription errors.
According to the survey, nearly half of these nurses (46%) said an error is extremely or very likely to occur when information must be manually transcribed from one device to another.
“I have seen many instances where numbers were incorrectly transcribed or put in reverse or put in the wrong column when typed manually, which can cause errors,” said one nurse who participated in the anonymous poll.
But perhaps even more important, transcribing data “takes way too much time for the nurses to adequately care for the patient,” one nurse responded. Many of these nurses agreed, with more than two out of three (69%) saying manually transcribing data is very likely to take time away from patients who need attention.
“Nurses enter the profession because they want to care for patients, not because they are interested in programming machines,” says Patricia H. Folcarelli, RN, senior director of Patient Safety at the Silverman Institute for Health Care Quality and Safety at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “As many as 10 devices may monitor or treat a single patient in an intensive care unit. The nurse not only has to program and monitor the machines, he or she often spends a significant amount of time transcribing data by hand because the devices are not designed to share information.”
“It’s time that we free our health care workers to do what they do best and what they are most needed for, which is caring for patients,” says Smith. “Let’s not ask busy clinicians to do those things that technology can automate easily and effectively. Medical device interoperability can save lives, time, and money, and at the same time allow nurses to focus on caring for patients.”
ABOUT THE WEST HEALTH INSTITUTE
The Gary and Mary West Health Institute is an independent, nonprofit medical research organization that works with health care providers and research institutions to create new, more cost–effective ways of delivering high–quality care. For more information, visit www.westhealth.org.
With more than 86 million Americans living with prediabetes and nearly 90% of them unaware of it, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced in March that they have joined forces to take urgent action to prevent diabetes and are urging others to join in this critical effort.
Prevent Diabetes STAT: Screen, Test, Act – Today™, is a multi-year initiative that expands on the robust work each organization has already begun to reach more Americans with prediabetes and stop the progression to type 2 diabetes, one of the nation’s most debilitating chronic diseases. Through this initiative, the AMA and CDC are sounding an alarm and shining a light on prediabetes as a critical and serious medical condition.
“It’s time that the nation comes together to take immediate action to help prevent diabetes before it starts,” says AMA President Robert M. Wah, MD. “Type 2 diabetes is one of our nation’s leading causes of suffering and death—with one out of three people at risk of developing the disease in their lifetime. To address and reverse this alarming national trend, America needs frontline physicians and other health care professionals as well as key stakeholders such as employers, insurers, and community organizations to mobilize and create stronger linkages between the care delivery system, our communities, and the patients we serve.”
People with prediabetes have higher-than-normal blood glucose levels but not high enough yet to be considered type 2 diabetes. Research shows that 15% to 30% of overweight people with prediabetes will develop type 2 diabetes within five years unless they lose weight through healthy eating and increased physical activity.
As an immediate result of this partnership, the AMA and CDC have co-developed a toolkit to serve as a guide for physicians and other health care providers on the best methods to screen and refer high-risk patients to diabetes prevention programs in their communities. The toolkit along with additional information on how physicians and other key stakeholders can Prevent Diabetes STAT is available online at www.preventdiabetesstat.org.
Over the past two years, both the CDC and the AMA have been laying the groundwork for this national effort. In 2012, the CDC launched its National Diabetes Prevention Program based on research led by the National Institutes of Health, which showed that high-risk individuals who participated in lifestyle change programs, like those recognized by the CDC, saw a significant reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes. Today, there are more than 500 of these programs across the country, including online options.
The AMA launched its Improving Health Outcomes initiative in 2013 aimed at preventing both type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That work includes a partnership with the YMCA of the USA to increase the number of physicians who screen patients for prediabetes and refer them to diabetes prevention programs offered by local YMCAs that are part of the CDC’s recognition program. This joint effort included 11 physician practice pilot sites in four states, where care teams helped to inform the development of the AMA and CDC’s toolkit. In the coming months, the AMA will be identifying states in which to strengthen the linkages between the clinical care setting and communities to reduce the incidence of diabetes.
“Long-term, we are confident that this important and necessary work will improve health outcomes and reduce the staggering burden associated with the public health epidemic of type 2 diabetes,” says Wah.
Erma Willis-Alford, BSN, RN, is quick to say that her experience as the first African American nurse at Memorial Hospital of Southern Oklahoma is “no Rosa Parks story.”
Unlike the late Parks, who became a symbol of courage in the civil rights era for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man, the 61-year-old nurse says she experienced little prejudice from colleagues and patients when she joined the Ardmore, Okla., hospital in 1966.
Her story, instead, could more aptly be described as the heart-warming tale of an African American woman embraced by a hospital and city seeking to bring about peaceful integration. Anyone who remembers or has studied the 1960s civil rights struggle will remember that integration often occurred only after overcoming violent resistance.
Willis-Alford says her story is quite the opposite. She wasn’t trying to make a statement or become a civil rights pioneer when she applied for a position at the hospital that now goes by the name of Mercy Memorial Health Center. She just wanted a job. She had become impressed with the hospital after visiting a sick cousin who was a patient there. To a small-town girl from Pauls Valley, Okla., the four-story building looked like a gleaming tower dedicated to modern medicine.
Compared with the one-story hospital in Pauls Valley, a city that to this day has a population of only 9,152 people, the Ardmore facility looked like a skyscraper, Willis-Alford remembers. The well-dressed staff appeared so efficient and professional that she yearned to be a part of it all. So she decided to apply for a job there, “not knowing that they did not have a black nurse and had never had a black nurse on the staff.”
“A Beautiful Experience”
Willis-Alford’s interest in nursing started at a young age and seemed quite natural for someone in her family. Her great-great grandmothers and their sisters had all been midwives and her father worked as a scrub tech in a hospital operating room. She began her formal training as a teenager in 1964, when she enrolled in a first aid class. A year later she took a class to become a nurse’s aide and that same year began work at the Pauls Valley State School, a facility for children born with deformities.
Willis-Alford, who says she has worked in every type of nursing except the operating room, isn’t sure what the administration at Memorial Hospital of Southern Oklahoma had on its mind when they hired her. If there was some plan to integrate the hospital and use her as the guinea pig, they never told her. And they didn’t parade her through the facility as some sort of symbol of brotherly love.
They just put her to work, placing her with two other nurse’s aides who taught her the ropes. Later, when she became a nurse, the floor nurses took her under their wings and trained her so she could work on any floor.
“It was a beautiful experience,” she recalls. “I’m sure there must have been some racism, but it wasn’t blatant. I didn’t see it. I was so eager to work and make a good salary.” She had three children at the time (and would eventually give birth to another) and didn’t have time to worry about what people were saying. “I was more concerned about doing my job, doing what the head nurse asked me to do and doing exactly what the physicians wanted,” she explains.
The hospital staff went out of its way to make her feel included, she adds, and she, in turn, went out of her way to get to know people. Although she didn’t drink coffee or smoke, she willingly joined her colleagues on coffee or smoking breaks because it gave her a chance to get to know them on a personal level. “I would stand there and inhale their second-hand smoke and enjoyed every bit of it,” she laughs.
Willis-Alford, who eventually became supervisor of the hospital’s emergency department, says she never received “the dirty end of the stick.” She was expected to do the same work as any other nurse and never felt she was given more work than others.
Community Support
Memorial Hospital deserves much of the credit for Willis-Alford’s career progression from nurse’s aide to licensed vocational nurse and, eventually, to registered nurse. The hospital paid for her to attend a 12-month LVN program at Southern Oklahoma Technology Center in Ardmore. When she graduated in 1968, she became the second African American to complete that particular program, which had been established two years earlier. She received her LVN license in 1968.
Three years later, the hospital again provided financial support that enabled her to continue her professional education. They paid for her to attend a two-year RN program at nearby Murray State College. She became the first African-American to graduate from that program, which was also in its second year. But she would not have achieved that milestone if the Ardmore community hadn’t stepped up to help her during a time of family crisis.
In 1973, an accident left her young daughter severely burned and facing months of recuperation and reconstructive surgery. Willis-Alford’s instinct was to quit school and care for her, and she would have done that had it not been for the wives of Ardmore’s Shriners, who offered to tend to her daughter while she attended school each day.
“[They] told me, ‘Go on to school, you get your lessons and learn to be a nurse,’” she says. Later, when she and her daughter traveled to Galveston, Texas, for reconstructive surgeries, two Ardmore physicians offered to let her son stay with them until she returned.
The Shriners’ wives and the physicians were all white. “They’re just that way,” she says, explaining why people went out of their way to help. “They wanted to do the right thing.”
Oil discovered more than a century ago had brought wealth to Ardmore residents, and that wealth bought more than just the stately mansions that still stand along the city’s Sunset Boulevard. It also helped fund five major foundations and endowments that have brought high standards of excellence in medicine, academics and the arts to Ardmore.
Perhaps the fact that the city operated, at least to some degree, on a “higher plane” led Memorial Hospital to integrate so easily and to support Willis-Alford’s aspirations to become a nurse. Or maybe the hospital simply valued her work. “I was told that I gave excellent care,” she says. “I pride myself on doing the right thing for my patients.”
At first, some of the older patients had trouble adjusting to having an African American nurse care for them. Willis-Alford says some used what she calls “the ‘N’ word” to refer to her. She didn’t like the word then any more than she does now.
“But I did not take it out on them, because that’s how they were raised,” she says. “They didn’t know any better. Why would I fight with someone who was ill? You don’t do that. But eventually they would say, ‘Have the black girl come in’ [because I provided such good care].”
Another major step forward took place a short time after Willis-Alford’s arrival at the hospital. Until then, the patients had always been segregated, and minority patients were sometimes placed in hallways and treatment rooms. Suddenly, the hospital staff started placing patients in rooms without regard to race. In a subtle way, her presence was again making a difference.
Encouraging Others
Erma Willis-Alford paved the path for other nurses of color in Oklahoma to follow. Although she was the only black RN in Ardmore for 15 years, other African Americans were hired by Memorial Hospital to work as nurse’s aides and LVNs.
“I think my presence and the road I took stimulated others to want to do the same things,” she says.
Eventually, more African American RNs began working in Ardmore. Willis-Alford estimates that approximately 15 black RNs work in the city today. More are needed, she says, adding that she hopes more African American men and women will enter the profession.
“We do need more and more and more [minority nurses], because sometimes [minority patients are able to relate better to caregivers who share their race or ethnicity],” she says. “Sometimes another person of their race may be able to get them to speak up and explain the problems that they have.”
Why are African Americans and other people of color still so underrepresented in nursing? Willis-Alford believes that sometimes the barriers to progress come from inside rather than from others.
“I think a lot of it has to do with self-determination and controlling your own environment,” she explains. For example, some minority students look at the rigorous coursework needed to become a nurse and red flags of self-doubt pop up. She feels it is crucial for parents and educators to work together to encourage and prepare young people of color to pursue health care careers–for example, by making sure they take science and math classes from an early age. “By the time they are ready to graduate from high school, it is too late to begin to take those classes,” she asserts. “[For students who don’t have that preparation,] college will be an uphill struggle.”
She speaks highly of a national training initiative called the Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program, designed for underrepresented and disadvantaged students from under-served urban and rural areas who are in the seventh grade and higher. The federally funded program, established in 1971, enables students to shadow someone who works in the health care field. AHEC also hosts a summer camp that allows students to gain hands-on experience in health care-related activities.
Still Spreading the Message
Willis-Alford eventually left Memorial Hospital in the 1980s for a better-paying job at Presbyterian Hospital in Oklahoma City, where she worked on the cancer floor. She became certified in chemotherapy and worked with bone marrow transplant patients.
She is now semi-retired, although it’s hard to tell. She lectures once a month at the Ardmore Senior Citizens Center, serves on various boards, reviews grants for the federal government, helps organize health fairs and works in youth camps each summer. In November 2003, she was part of a U.S. medical delegation that traveled to Cuba through the People to People Ambassador Program, an international exchange program established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956.
Willis-Alford is also involved in many preventive education activities aimed at fighting health disparities in the African American community. She provides information on diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity and HIV/AIDS. Some of this information isn’t readily available at community health clinics, she says.
“Certain chronic diseases may not be prevented, but they can certainly be delayed,” she emphasizes. “That is the message I try to get out. People should not wait for signs and symptoms to appear before they seek medical help. We are now in the era of prevention.”
Not surprisingly, three of Willis-Alford’s four children work in the health care field–her youngest daughter became an RN exactly 20 years after she did–and one of her 12 grandchildren is studying to become a physician. These days, she says she can’t maintain the pace she did years ago and has no interest in working the “long hauls” that one has to endure as a floor nurse. But that doesn’t mean she plans on retiring to her rocking chair any time soon.
Her next major goal is to earn a graduate degree, preferably a doctorate in health education and leadership. She’s considering schools in Oklahoma City and Denton, Texas, that offer doctorates with classes structured in such a way that she won’t have to attend school five days a week.
This remarkable nurse may not be the Oklahoma equivalent of Rosa Parks, who died in October 2005 at the age of 92. But when the history of Ardmore, Okla., is written, there will no doubt be a page devoted to Erma Willis-Alford. Photo by leoncillo sabino
For Gretheline R. Bolandrina, BSN, RN, CRRN, being recognized for outstanding service to the nursing profession and the community is nothing new. The Boston nurse, who works for SunBridge Care and Rehabilitation for Milford in Milford, Mass., has been honored over the years with numerous awards from organizations such as the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Philippine Nurses Association of New England and the National Federation of Filipino American Associations.
This past fall, Bolandrina, who is also a clinical instructor at the Massachusetts Bay Community College, added another, even more prestigious honor to her resume. She received the 2005 National Prism Award for Women of Style and Achievements, given by the Gintong Pamana (Golden Heritage) Awards Foundation in cooperation with the publications PhilippineTIME-U.S.A. and The Fil-Am Weekly MegaScene.
The National Prism Award celebrates the achievements of outstanding Filipino American women who have “an inherent power to make things happen [and who have] consistently made a difference in other people’s lives.” Bolandrina, a 1987 graduate of the University of Santo Tomas College of Nursing in Manila, certainly fits that description. Since coming to Boston in 1989, she has volunteered with many community service organizations, including the Girl Scouts, Locks of Love, HOPE Foundation International, Iskwelahang Pilipino, the Lowell Folk Festival, Bagong Kulturang Pinoy and more. She also writes a column for the newsmagazine Planet Philippines.
Camping, as we know it in the United States today, has more than 140 years of history. According to the American Camping Association (ACA), camp has its roots deeply planted in American soil. From the first organized American camp, The Gunnery Camp, founded in 1861, to the coast-to-coast camping opportunities that exist today, “camp has always been a place where children could prepare to be productive and healthy adults in the context of fun and games,” the ACA says.
There are currently more than 12,000 day and resident camps in the United States, attended each year by over 10 million children and adults. More than 8,000 of these camps are operated by nonprofit groups, such as youth agencies, scouting groups and religious organizations; the rest are privately owned for-profit operations. The camping industry employs more than 1.2 million people in various capacities, including counselors, program leaders, camp directors, supervisors, support services staff and nurses.
America’s camps are as diverse, and their programs as distinct, as the campers who attend them. According to the ACA, an increasing number of children, teens and adults, from all social, cultural and economic backgrounds, will have a camp experience. Furthermore, the association adds, in the past 10 years there has been an increase in the use of international staff to expose campers to different cultures.
Nurses from diverse backgrounds who like to spend time with children–working with them, teaching them and learning from them–and who also enjoy being outdoors should consider becoming a camp nurse. Nurses are typically hired for the summer to provide health care to the campers and staff and to deliver health education in a non-traditional setting. Camp nursing is also an ideal summer or temporary job for school nurses who would like to earn extra income during their summer break.
Camping promotes self-responsibility in children to seek out health care on their own, experts say. The results of a 1998 longitudinal study by Louise Rauckhorst and Jane Aroian on children’s use of summer camp health facilities indicated that accidents/injuries were the number one reason why campers sought health care, followed by visits associated with communicable disease, most commonly upper respiratory infections. According to a 2002 article in Camping Magazine (“Camp Nursing: Student Internships,” by C. Harwood and L. Van Hofwegen), most camp settings are dynamic pediatric and community health learning opportunities and most camp health centers are nurse-managed health care environments.
Diverse Camps for Diverse Kids
Linda Ebner Erceg, RN, MS, PHN, has worked as a camp professional since 1969. She specializes in camp health services with a special focus on risk reduction initiatives, and is also executive director of the Association of Camp Nurses (ACN), an international nursing organization she helped launch in 1990.
In her article “Finding a Camp Nurse Job: Tips to Help You Experience Success” (available on the ACN Web site), Erceg writes that the most important step is to find a camp that combines both the nurse’s style of practice and his/her philosophy of health care. “Just as there are many types of clinics, hospitals, public health and school nursing positions, so too are there many different camps and camp directors,” she notes.
There are day camps, overnight camps, short-term (two or three day) camps, seasonal camps that last eight or more weeks, and even some camps that offer year-round opportunities. The programs offered are diversified and meet the needs of a broad age range–from very young children to senior citizens. Erceg points out that camps may specialize in a particular activity (e.g. horsemanship, trip camping), offer high adventure programs (such as white-water canoeing) or provide a broad, general program with waterfront activities, archery, crafts, tenting experiences and/or various sports. There are also specialty camps that serve children with special needs.
For example, Camp Boggy Creek, located in Eustis, Fla., is a permanent, year-round facility for young people between the ages of seven and 16 who have chronic and life-threatening illnesses. The campers attend at no charge; the majority of the cost of staffing and operating the camp is covered by contributions from individuals, health care partnerships, foundations and corporations. Children with illnesses such as asthma, cancer, diabetes, hemophilia, kidney disease, sickle cell anemia, spina bifida and others enjoy a safe and exciting camp experience with a well-rounded summer staff made up of people from all different backgrounds whose strong desire to work with children brings them together as a team.
While some camps for children with special medical needs are general in focus, others are targeted to campers who have a specific disease. For instance, there are asthma camps, diabetes camps, sickle-cell camps and so on. These types of camps, which can be easily located by doing an Internet search, are often affiliated with local medical centers or with organizations like the American Diabetes Association and the American Lung Association.
Campers Come in All Colors
Because camping increasingly reflects the wide-ranging racial, ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic diversity of today’s America, minority nurses have much to offer the camp community.
Harriet Braithwaite, RN, started out volunteering at Camp Boggy Creek when the facility opened in 1996. She first became involved with the camp when her youngest daughter, born with polycystic kidney and liver disease, underwent a kidney transplant in 1995. Braithwaite says her first experience at the camp was wonderful. When her daughter later died after returning from a visit to relatives overseas, the African-American nurse decided to honor her memory by doing something to help other seriously ill children understand that they too could have fun at camp in spite of their medical conditions.
Because of her experience with peritoneal dialysis, Braithwaite is always available to perform dialysis at the camp if there is no nurse available to do so. She also dispenses meds and interacts with the children during their activities. “[Camp] Boggy is a beautiful place,” she says. “Over the years I have seen only positive changes, all for the good of the kids.”
Braithwaite, who is paid by her regular employer for the time she spends volunteering at the camp, feels it is important for minority children to interact with adult camp staff who look like them. “We need more [nurses of color] to encourage the kids and do something positive for them,” she comments.
While a camp setting is obviously different than the traditional hospital nursing environment, Braithwaite believes nursing is nursing no matter how you look at it. “You don’t have to have a BSN, MS or PhD to be a camp nurse,” she asserts. “However, you do need to be a team player, be self-sufficient and be willing to work hard and smile often.”
Another important point, Braithwaite adds, is to be honest with the children, especially those who have special medical needs. These kids, she explains, already know everything about their condition and don’t need to be reminded that they are sick; they just need to blend in as inconspicuously as possible.
Nofizwe Palmer, RN, has spent the last five years at Camp Boggy Creek as a volunteer nurse. Palmer, who is African American, believes it takes a special kind of nursing professional to be a camp nurse–whether at a mainstream camp or at a special-needs facility–because there is more of an emotional context to providing nursing care. “I truly believe I get more out of going to Camp Boggy than the campers do!” she says.
What Are You Doing This Summer?
Experienced camp administrators appreciate that camp nursing involves more than just applying bandages and passing out pills. According to Harwood and Hofwegen, quality camp nursing draws upon a blend of nursing assessment and skills. It also requires knowledge, attitudes and judgment specific to the unique needs of the camp clientele. Camp nurses must have a current CPR card, be licensed in the state in which the camp is located and follow that state’s Nurse Practice Act. At some camps, malpractice insurance is required, as well as a first aid certificate.
For More InformationAmerican Camping Association (ACA)
www.acacamps.orgAssociation of Camp Nurses (ACN)
www.acn.org
Camp nursing is demanding, challenging and complex. As in all areas of nursing practice, it is important that the nurse’s skills and competencies match the needs of the campers and that the camp supports safe nursing practice. Camp nurses should have good communication skills, as they frequently interact with administrators, campers and parents. They must also do a lot of teaching, both to staff and campers. Along with critical thinking skills and problem-solving capabilities, nurses should take along their stethoscopes, a current drug reference book and pediatric textbooks.
Nurses are sometimes able to take their own family to camp, but should research the camp prior to committing, so as to select the one that most closely meets family needs. When considering a position at a particular camp, it is also important to inquire about living accommodations, co-workers, salary, nurses’ responsibilities, work schedule, and addition medical support staff. There also can be more than one nurse at a camp.
The ACN’s Erceg believes the most successful camp nurses have a genuine interest in being at camp, enjoy the type of people for whom they provide care and like being part of a team.
“Camps need nurses,” she says. “Over five million children attended camp last summer and many went without a nurse. Camp nursing practice can be an empowering and wonderful experience. It is a practice setting where comfort with autonomy is necessary, where the working day may not be defined by eight hours and where the professional nurse is valued.”
A Field Guide to Camp Nursing Jobs
With more than 12,000 camps currently operating in the U.S., how can you make sure you’re choosing a camp nursing opportunity that’s right for you? Linda Ebner Erceg, RN, MS, PHN, executive director of the Association of Camp Nurses (ACN), offers this expert advice.
Factors to consider when evaluating a camp nurse position:
• Determine if the camp is American Camping Association (ACA) accredited–an excellent indicator of the camp’s commitment to quality programming.
• Ask for a copy of the camp’s health plan. This describes the needs of the camp population and defines the camp’s philosophy of health care.
• Ask for a copy of the camp nurse job description.
Questions to ask the camp director before accepting the position:
• What is a typical day in the life of a camp nurse like?
• What is the approximate number of people seen daily at the health center, and for what reasons?
• What kind of care does administration want the nurse to provide?
• Who supervises the nurses, and whom does the camp nurse supervise?
• What is the relationship of the nurse to other staff members?
• What is the amount of time spent on paperwork and what does it entail?
• What is the nurse’s role in communicable disease control and risk management?
• What is the salary and what are the benefits, such as housing and time off?
• Is there any additional health care support, such as a collaborating physician, standing orders, clinic/hospital, pharmacy, crisis response team, dentist, EMS?
Typical camp nurse responsibilities:
• Dispense meds
• First aid for minor injuries
• Ensure health and safety of campers and staff
• Daily sick call
• Weekly health checks
• Communicate specific camper health needs (allergies, special diets, etc.) to staff
• Medical record keeping
• Liaison with local doctors, hospitals and pharmacies
• Make sure transitioning doctors are informed of health center procedures and current medical issues
• Communicate with parents
• Accompany sick/injured campers or staff to the hospital or to medical appointments
• Be a “summer mom/dad” to campers
• Participate in camp activities and events
Equipment the camp should have:
• Walkie-talkies, phones, pagers
• Intubation supplies
• Standard emergency equipment and medications
• Oxygen tanks
