subject: Rural Nurse Enhance Their Skills [print this page] Rural Nurse Enhance Their Skills Rural Nurse Enhance Their Skills
Nurses at Bob Wilson Memorial Hospital in Ulysses are heading east to experience the cutting edge of nursing at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The nurses who earlier worked in rural hospitals with few or no patients now work for a short period of time in the Kansas City hospital thanks to the program started by the medical center. The hospital and the nurses, both are benefited through this program as the hospital is able to increase its nursing staff while the nurses get to work with medical cases which they haven't treated before.
So far, the only participating hospital is the 35-bed hospital in Ulysses. Of the 26 nurses in this hospital, 12 were hopeful of participating. Many have been there earlier where eight hour and twelve hour working shifts were rotated for 3-4 days.
This opportunity got, a 35-year old Ulysses nurse, extremely excited. Her services have been assigned to the hematology unit of the Kansas medical Center where she took care of bone marrow, kidney and liver transplant patients. Apart from being flown to Kansas City on their outreach plane, the nurses are also housed at the medical center during the scheduled stops to western Kansas.
The administrator at Bob Wilson Hospital said the program has fantastic potential for his hospital staff and surrounding hospitals in southwest Kansas. This program is a lifetime opportunity to get the best experience at nursing by working with state of the art equipment at the tertiary care level.
He also hopes that the knowledge, gained by the participating staff, benefits the rest of the staff and ultimately the patients. This provides it with the edge. The director at the medical center said that the program has a two-fold purpose. It is beneficial for hard working nurses as it enables them to enhance their skills and get full time work and this in turn helps the alleviation of a shortage of nurses at the Medical Center.
The nurses have well adapted to the medical center. She pointed that they were good practitioners, and performed well with only some instructions. And the center's staff has gladly embraced them. However, if it weren't for the seven passenger outreach planes, which carry the doctors to educational seminars, this program would have been possible.
The medical center has nurses coming in from Paola, Manhattan, Fort Scott and even Topeka, for part time work. The planes can provide a ride, at one time, to 2 or 3 nurses. The trips are definitely worth all the effort and preparation that go into it, says a passenger.
She would definitely like to go again in spite of the work involved. The nurse who has daughters, 8 and 14, said her children are supportive and want her to have the opportunity to enhance her skills. She feels that will hopefully learn a lot, come back home and put all that to use.
