Hanging Around the Ward: Opportunistic Education in An Acute Adolescent In-Patient Unit
Providing education to nurses in an acute in-patient setting is fraught with difficulties. Time, crises, high levels of acuity, inadeqaute resources are just some of the common obstacles and yet education is an essential element of practice development particularly given the number of new graduate and other nurses lacking mental health experience. In the absence of a nurse educator and after many attempts to develop an in-service education program met with limited success, an alternative was sought.
Inspired by the "Learning Through Work" program pioneered by Skidmore and Montgomery in Manchester and memories of former ways of passing on nursing know how, opportunistic education has been used as a method of providing education to nurses on an acute adolescent mental health in-patient unit. Senior clinical staff "hang around the ward" at crucial times such as shift handovers, note writing time and clinical meetings as well as whenever possible at other times to utilise whatever opportunities present themselves for educational input.
This paper presents examples of this process and discusses the benefits and difficulties of this approach. Evaluation of the model has not been undertaken at this time as there is no easily quantifiable outcome to measure. The anticipated outcome is an increase in nurses' knowledge, skills, confidence and competence over a period of time and ways of measuring and evaluating this are still under consideration.
In many ways this approach to education mirrors other aspects of mental health nursing. "Hanging around with patients" appears to outsiders to have limited therapeutic value but nurses know how powerfully therapeutic this can be. Likewise, "hanging around the ward" appears to be a powerful education strategy that probably appears to outsiders to be nothing more just "hanging around the ward".
This is an example of an innovative solution to a common problem and will hopefully inspire others to think about alternative ways to work.