Education/training
Algonquin college proclaimed hub of excellenceThere is a Hub of Excellence in Ottawa. You won't find it on Parliament Hill, but at Algonquin College, which the Ontario government has designated a Hub of Excellence for Operating Room Nursing Education. DAVID CHILTON |
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 [ 2006-08-30 ] |
Barbara Foulds, associate dean of Health, Public Safety and Community Studies at Algonquin, says the Hub of Excellence is a designation her college sought rather than had thrust on it. The designation became official this spring. Funding for Hubs in Nursing Education was announced last November by the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care as part of the provincial government's wait times strategy.
Becoming a Hub of Excellence addresses two key issues in nursing, Foulds says. The first is the looming shortage of nurses in general and, in particular, the shortage of nurses in specialties such as operating room nursing.
As a Hub of Excellence, and the funding that comes with it -- some $500,000 -- Algonquin will continue to offer leading-edge programs such as the post-graduate certificate in operating room nursing. Second, Foulds continues, the designation means the college can offer curriculum that can be used across the province to bring uniformity to operating room nursing instruction.
That uniformity will come from a video conferencing capability attached to Algonquin's simulation centre, which has its own operating room simulation lab that features mannequins so lifelike they can be programmed to respond to anesthesia gases.
"We can have students in another area of the province and they actually will be able to see, in real time, an O.R. suite setup," Foulds says. "For nursing, of course, we want to be able to emulate what happens in an operating room and the various O.R. setups -- the gowning, the gloving, the (instrument) trays." Using a password and a secure high-speed link, nurses coming off a shift (or even during one) can log on and watch operating room simulations, Foulds says.
"They don't even have to come to the college," Foulds says, "because they are nurses who are working. At the end of a 12-hour shift, the last thing they want to do is go to a college and sit in a classroom for another couple of hours."
The simulation centre -- officially the Simulation Centre for Health Studies -- was completed last November and is the first of its kind in the country. It allows doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, paramedics and -- next year -- anesthesia assistants to practise what they have learnt before going into clinical practice.
Shannon McKennitt is a registered nurse who graduated from Queen's University in April. At the end of September, after five months studying critical care nursing at Algonquin, she starts work full time in the ICU at Ottawa Civic Hospital and can't say enough about the simulation centre.
"It's absolutely phenomenal," says McKennitt, who thinks all other labs pale in comparison. "It just makes you more comfortable and more confident. It's nice to see a school so committed to a profession."
For the RNs who take the operating room certificate program on-site at Algonquin, Foulds says they typically spend six months studying part time. Among the courses the nurses must take are surgical procedures, anesthetic and post-anesthetic care and perioperative patient care. Each course costs about $200 and students can pay for them course by course. There are usually 40 or so nurses taking the operating room program at Algonquin.
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