Students at Broward County Community College in
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., celebrate
after successfully completing AACN's Essentials of Critical Care Orientation program.
Editor's note: This is the first of two articles discussing the use of AACN's ECCO
program by Broward Community College in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
In 2001, Broward Community College in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., set out to develop Internet-based
courses that would capitalize on grant opportunities for offering continuing education
to nurses in the community.
The college worked in collaboration with representatives from several area hospitals
to determine what content was most in demand and best suited to delivery via the
Internet. The group, which was initially headed by Kathy Jackson, RN, BSN, MA, EdD,
the college's dean of Continuing Education and Workforce Development, included representatives
from Broward General Medical Center, part of the North Broward Hospital District,
and Holy Cross Hospital, both in Ft. Lauderdale, and Memorial Regional Healthcare
System in Hollywood, Fla.
According to Jackson, the group's ideal was to find a course offering from a professional
organization that was similar in nature to courses the hospitals were currently
offering. Before developing anything on their own, the group researched programs
that were already available and found the Essentials of Critical Care Orientation
(ECCO) program from AACN. Mindy Smyth, RN, MSN, CCRN, CNA, who is with Broward General
Medical Center, added that the discovery of the ECCO program was exciting because
of its potential to replace the printed version of the basic orientation program
being used by the group participants.
Robert Seeley, RN, BSN, CCRN, who is with Holy Cross Hospital, shared that the group
realized that the critical care education offered could be standardized while reducing
the workload on each educator by pooling the teaching resources of educators at
the participating facilities.
"In the past, we had coordinated up to 18 clinicians per course to present
material," explained Robin Petit, RNC, MSN, ARNP, who is with the North Broward
Hospital District.
She indicated that a shift in focus to increase the clinician's time at the bedside
meant minimizing it in the classroom.
"This has been significant in keeping clinicians at the bedside, precepting
nurses," she said.
Smyth said indicated it has also allowed the participating hospitals to offer training
more frequently than in the past.
Kathleen King, RN, ARNP, MSN, CCRN, who is with the college, said resource sharing
has been especially helpful because the nursing shortage has put a strain on the
teaching resources available for training nurses for such specialties as progressive
care, critical care and emergency departments.
Although the ECCO program is used primarily to provide a core foundation for nurses
entering such specialty practices, Smyth pointed out the benefits gained by mixing
learners who have various levels of skill from novice to graduate nurse new to critical
care. Barbara Pierson, RN, MSN, CCRN, who is with Memorial Regional Healthcare System,
added that telemetry nurses benefit from this program as well due to the changing
level of skill required to provide this type of care.
A combination of H-1B federal grant funding and matching commitments from participating
hospitals has enabled Broward Community College to provide more than 120 scholarships
to hospital employees for continuing education in one of these specialty areas.
Each hospital identifies the nurses to be trained, then enrolls them in the next
available course offered by the collaborative.
Part II: The structure of the didactic and clinical teaching components of the course
will be presented in the February 2004 issue of AACN News.
