SVN training

Re: SVN training

Emma Jarratt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:18:40 GMT

training board thing sounds good, we did something similar a while ago.

hope you get on ok :)

Re: SVN training

Emma Jarratt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:14:28 GMT

[quote user="Bouncyfi"]

Also I'm sure the ban on advertising to VNs has been lifted, so vet nurses can be spoken to about POM-V drugs now.

[/quote]

sorry phrased that badly - I meant that the genitrix products for small mammals are marketed under the small animal exemption scheme, so effectively AVM-GSL meaning they don't need a prescription therefore the nurses can sell over the counter so makes sense to learn about them and be comfortable advising about them.

Re: SVN training

Maisy — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:48:18 GMT

Thanks both for your help I like the idea of the diary though whether it would be filled in or not is anyones guess! I've put up a training board today where all the students can write down areas they want/need to cover and then its ticked off once myself and they are happy with that. I think I need to go over what constitutes as training though as after speaking to the practice principal (who gets involved in clinical training) it seems that they cover a fair bit in theatre etc which is never mentioned.

Will try a few different methods and see how we get on

Thanks again!

Re: SVN training

Fiona Leathers — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:31:55 GMT

Get your students to keep a reflective diary every day - record in it what they did, new experiences, how they handled it, how they thought they could do better etc etc. This can be added into the portfolio to show what they are learning day to day.

Also I'm sure the ban on advertising to VNs has been lifted, so vet nurses can be spoken to about POM-V drugs now.

Re: SVN training

Emma Jarratt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:05:35 GMT

Like you I consider the tutorial record form the student's responsibility. Neither of my students keep it up to date enough - they only tend to record formal sessions when someone has sat down and said 'now we're going to do a tutorial about bandaging/fluid therapy/orthopaedic instruents' whatever - they don't record every clinical discussion or the mini-tutorials that happen five or ten times a day. To be fair, if they did, we'd never get anything done, but I do worry that they don't recognise what is 'teaching'. I basically regard any time they have working with myself, the head nurse or other vets is pretty much teaching time - we are constantly discussing issues, asking them questions about their understanding of cases etc. Whenever I am operating and one of my students is monitoring GA, as long as everything is stable and routine, we tend to chat about things they have been learning about, explaining concepts, questioning them on their knowledge etc. They are constantly learning new skills and concepts and being trained, way more than three hours, and very little is every sit-down training.

It sounds to me like you work in a similar way to us and that you're being entirely reasonable. It's a shame that your student didn't come to you first though. Issues like this are always solved with less personal anguish if just discussed calmly and openly. I'd probably want to sit down with her, ask her what specific issues she has (are there areas where she is not confident and wants more specific training, in which case plan it etc). It sounds like more of a confidence & communication problem - maybe she isn't confident saying she doesn't know/understand things and is just doing things that she feels she actually needs more training in, but doesn't have the confidence to speak up. She may also need some help recognising what 'counts' as training, so sitting down and discussing that might help. If she doesn't have time to keep the tutorial record up to date, perhaps she could keep a teensy notebook in her pocket to keep record through the day about conversations, cases etc that are part of training/teaching and then once a week or so update her tutorial record (something I have suggested to my own students but doesn't really happen!)

We're also going through a phase of inviting loads of reps to do lunch meetings aimed at nurses as well as vets, things like nutrition, nutraceuticals, pain management, and today booking the genitrix rep to come talk about small furry parasites etc as the drugs aren't POM at all.

Hope that helps.