One of the most commonly searched terms on this site is “compassion fatigue” (or alternately “secondary trauma” or “burnout”). Enough of you have been searching the term lately that I’m compelled to give you a new offering on the subject. This one‘s from PESI, and while it’s not free (cost is $29), it nets nurses 1.5 CEUs in a convenient audio package.
Two new online courses have been announced at IAFN: SANE Dialogues: Focus Group on the Use of nPEP in SANE Programs and Patterns of Injury in Non-Accidental Childhood Fatalities. They’re free for members; non-members pay $10 each. It would appear that there are CEUs attached, but I could not find any specifics related to how many for either course. If you’re a Firefox user, be forewarned: you may not be able to complete the posttest to get credit for the course, so Internet Explorer is really the only way to access this content (which frankly sucks for Mac users like me).
This week was a good one at the Sustainability site. We’re back with a new Coordinator Q&A, and a couple additional goodies for all you program managers out there:
Enjoy your weekend everyone!
The Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Minority Health has a new curriculum available: Cultural Competency for Disaster Preparedness & Crisis Response. The curriculum consists of 4 courses that “are designed to equip disaster and crisis volunteers and personnel with the awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services to diverse communities during all phases of disaster. The curriculum is grounded in the Office of Minority Health’s CLAS Standards, which are grouped into three themes: Culturally Competent Care, Language Access Services, and Organizational Supports.”
Time once again for another installment of evidence-based medicine. The issue gets brought up in emails to me from time to time, and recently I’ve had a spate of them. So here’s another tutorial for your learning pleasure– this time, from the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
I think this issue is an important one, because as I’ve expressed many a time, one of the most critical questions you should be able to answer as a clinician is “Why?”. “Because that’s the way I was taught” or “That’s how we’ve always done it” probably isn’t going to cut it.
I’m pleased to welcome Jennifer Pierce Weeks to Forensic Healthcare Online. As a clinician, administrator, national trainer and President of IAFN, she is another one of those folks who spends a lot of time talking with people in the field, and has a great perspective on healthcare-focused, patient-centered, sustainable programming.
We’ve been talking a lot lately about the issue of quality in SANE/SAFE education. There are no mandated qualifications for who provides the education, so caveat emptor is the rule of the day. IAFN does not police training, but provides education guidelines that describe the minimum body of knowledge all SANEs/SAFEs should possess (there are also training standards for sexual assault forensic examiners (PDF) around the National Protocol). Needless to say, some of the education out there is definitely better than others.
Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the June/July/August issues. As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. Most links lead to PubMed abstracts (except for one, which goes to Ingenta); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library; or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.
Just a warning: it’s a lengthy list this month. There’s all kinds of good stuff being published right now…
So about that announcement of mine…
I have been teaching and consulting for prosecutors for many years now. It’s really one of the parts of my professional life I enjoy most. So I am beyond grateful to be able to announce that today is the 1st day of my new job, as medical advisor for a brand new prosecution institute: Aequitas, the Prosecutor’s Resource on Violence Against Women. Our new website is just about ready to launch (we’re only about a month old, now); for a few more days you may still get the “under construction” notice. I will continue to oversee the National SANE Sustainability Technical Assistance project, as well–essentially splitting my time between those two gigs. You can check the updated About for all the details.
I’m back from the desert and looking forward to a long weekend. I’m going to take part of the day off, so just an abbreviated warp-up (wow, now that’s a typo!) wrap-up today. Because I was gone all week, only a couple things on the sustainability site:
Have a safe and happy 4th for all of my American readers (and for my Canadian readers, a belated happy Canada Day!). I’ll be back Monday with new content, the July edition of Articles of Note, and a big announcement!
ANA has a recently updated CE offering on nurse victims of workplace violence. It’s your standard article-posttest format. Cost is $20 ($15 for ANA members) for 1.52 CEUs. The focus of this course is a bit different than what you might initially think–there’s more of a secondary trauma bent following victimization (rather than a lateral violence focus, as is often the case with a lot of these offerings).
Because the topic is so popular on this site, another online STD clinical course, this one from Boston University’s School of Medicine. It’s free of charge, but requires registration to participate. CMEs available (natch), but the course info specifies nurses as part of the target audience, as well. For those of you running sexual assault programs, this might be a good one to have your team members complete as a part of annual competency efforts–just have them print off the certificate of completion at the end (or whatever they provide for CMEs), and you can add it to their personnel files.
I haven’t done this one yet, so I’ll be interested in feedback…