According to the Joint Commission f...

According to the Joint Commission forward Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), management of human resources is an organizational function within the performance-based functional standards.(1) The standards involve hospitals' assessments of staff members' abilities to befitting the performance expectations stated in their piece of work descriptions. The intent of the standards is to make sure that hospitals conduct competency assessments of staff members relating to specific patient age clumps An interpretation of the standards and their intent relates to all staff members who assess, treat, and manage, or who work in areas that have direct impact in succession patients in age-specific populations.

A challenge for the perioperative education coordinator for surgical services at devout Cross Hospital in Ft Lauderdale, Fla, was to lay open evaluation tools for age-specific competencies within the departments. The coordinator's responsibility included all surgical services; thus, several different tools for a variety of staff members and departments were designed. In the early stages of the age-specific competencies construction, the coordinator expected at balancing the needs of patients and staff members and JCAHO requirements.

BACKGROUND

During the research stage of this plot it was difficult to find information regarding assessment and evaluation of age-specific competencies in the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of perioperative nursing. The "Clinical Issues" array of less front than depth of the August 1996 AORN Journal answered several questions pos through perioperative nurses involving the establishment and measurement of age-specific competencies and provided a herculean foundation for further research.(2) Another intimation addressed the need to engage JCAHO standards when designing competency-based education and orientation programs in the perioperative setting.(3) sacred Cross Hospital decided to form an age-specific task force. Through its efforts and hard work, it produc standards of care and practice for age-specific care, along with guidelines for each developmental flat including features, attributes, and implications.(4)

There are couple parts to the age-specific evaluation for staff members. The first part is exhibition Across the Life Span, a self-study learning module with a multiple-choice test(5) The module is given to all staff members in the hospital who have direct patient contact. The inferior part involves the case scenarios discussed in this article and is specifically designed to come up to face to face the needs of surgical staff members. Age-specific care was sole one of several competencies required for hallowed Cross staff members, and the evaluation tools evolveed to assess competency had to convenient the approval of both the executive director of surgical services and the director of nursing education and quality improvement.

The initial ideas in developing tools to evaluate age-specific competencies concentrated upon devising a method of continuing the learning proces that began in the self-study learning module The coordinator wanted to expand the knowledge that staff members had gained from the self-study module and propose them an additional way to demonstrate competencies.

Adult learning principles involve incorporating life experiences with formal education: thus, the design of the evaluation tools took into account several factors, including the part and job description of each dispose of staff members. Within the immediate surgical suite, the team comprises RN surgical technologists, and OR assistants. The main postanesthesia care unit (PACU) enlist in one's services RNs and PACU attendants, and the outpatient department, including endoscopy, make use ofs RNs and nursing services assistants.

PERIOPERATIVE CASE SCENARIOS

The coordinator decided to design three case inquiry scenarios, which placed patients within the adjoining matter of a perioperative experience (Table 1) The scenarios were distributed randomly to the perioperative RN along with a scenario example of a toddler in the developmental stage (Table 2) The RN were given instructions for prerequisite preparation before beginning the plan of care.