This presentation was completed by Avery Lutrzykowski and Mckenna Remillard. We discussed the LGBTQ+ population and the societal and health care discrimination that people who identify within this population face. We also discussed ways to create more inclusion within society and a hospital setting.
Month: November 2022
After volunteering at the hospital with the Hospital Elder Life Program, I was amazed with the thorough and thought-out program the hospital created. My knowledge of delirium and preventative factors has changed because I now realized the importance of the HELP program. The preventative factors are small details that anyone that works in the hospital can do to help reduce the patients risk of delirium. Through asking the patients their background history, how they have been sleeping, and other risk factors, the volunteer is able to inform the staff of the patient’s risk of delirium. I am grateful for this experience because it was a very well-rounded volunteer involvement, and it also gave me an opportunity to learn something knew that I plan to incorporate into my future nursing care.
The most meaningful aspect of my volunteer experience was interacting with the patients and understanding that the volunteer work was truly helping the individual. Oftentimes the patients were extremely grateful of someone coming to speak with them. I learned many interesting and amazing things from the stories the patients told me. I enjoyed the experience because I was able to spend time with multiple patients and allow them to freely discuss anything they wanted.
The learning goals I created before my shift volunteer shift were met through my three shifts. I plan to integrate this knowledge moving forward by incorporating it into my assessments. I feel as though I am very aware of the preventative measures to decrease the risk of delirium and plan to implement that with the care of my patients. Again, I am thankful for this experience to fully understand the importance of decreasing delirium through preventive measures.
The topic my group decided to use was about sleep quality in the hospital and the reduction of delirium. After creating and revisiting our project proposal, I discovered many interventions to improve sleep quality as well as how to create more interventions to further improve sleep. Before drafting the project proposal, our team needed to create a literature review to discuss the literary findings we planned to use in the proposal. The literature review did not change my assumptions on the need to improve sleep quality at the hospital, especially to reduce the risk of developing delirium. The literature review did enlighten me to numerous different ways to improve sleep quality, including the use of fans, white noise machines, or sleep quality surveys. Through our literature review we found different articles outlining sleep improvement at hospitals, this allowed us to continue onto the topic proposal without revising it.
After reviewing the literature and creating the topic proposal, I have learned many ways to help patients in the hospital sleep better. These findings will impact my future nursing practice because I plan to utilize these interventions within my care. I understand that having to sleep in. a hospital bed can be extremely difficult, so I plan to discuss this with each of my patients and figure out an intervention that best suits their needs. I plan to use a detailed, quick questionnaire with each of my patients to better understand what they need to sleep better. I will provide sleep masks, fans, extra blankets, or anything else that the hospital has available to improve their quality of sleep. Through these interventions, I hope to improve the sleep but also the care of everyone I care for.
My team worked very diligently to work through the literature review and the topic proposal. We discussed and wrote the topic proposal in person together, and after revising it, received a very good grade on it. We were proud to have accomplished this. There were a few challenges along the way. One challenge was trying to find a time outside of school to go over the hospital provided guideline for sleep quality. We worked through this challenge by meeting on zoom and working through the guideline together. We have worked well together and plan to continue to work well together. If any other challenges arise, we plan to work together as a team to discuss and fix the challenge.
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