Edutainment Events Focus on the Fun

Edutainment events at Emergency Nursing 2022 — entertainment and education whirled together — are a time for participants to decompress at the end of the day while picking up knowledge that will be useful in their own emergency departments.  

“Nurses like to have fun, and we like to have these events where attendees can learn valuable information, but at the same time laugh and have a good time,” said ENA Conference Education Planning Committee Co-Chair Heidi Gilbert. 

Triage and Tequila

Sept. 30 — 6:15-7:30 p.m.
Four Seasons Ballroom

During “Triage and Tequila,” Gilbert and fellow conference planning committee Co-Chair Bradley Rund will host an interactive journey through ED decision-making in a “quirky” dinner theater format. 

“We are going to follow a frequent utilizer of the ED that comes in intoxicated, and attendees can vote using their smartphones on which direction they think we should take this patient, what tests might be added, what they think might be going on,” Gilbert said. 

Organizers hope their approach will help to identify some of the prevalent biases among emergency nurses. 

“We all tend to have some biases, and sometimes that can affect patient outcomes in negative ways,” Gilbert said. “We want to uncover those things, discuss them in a fun way and have people leave with a different perspective.”

Attendees also will come away with a better understanding of the Emergency Severity Index. 

“A lot of nurses struggle with ESI triage — what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate — and being able to sit down as a group and discuss this is really great,” Rund said. “It touches on back-to-the-basics information while offering an outside-the-box experience that we want to get from a conference.”

ENA: Tournament of Nurses

Oct. 2 — 6:15 to 7:15 p.m.
Four Seasons Ballroom

“ENA: Tournament of Nurses” aims to create a magical game night where the “Family Feud” game show meets Hogwarts houses of the “Harry Potter” series. 

Attendees will be sorted into houses for the competition, and teams will attempt to provide the most popular answers to questions about medical devices, procedures and patient care from a survey sent to ED teams. 

“Some of the questions are silly and some are straightforward,” Gilbert explained. “Some are clinical-focused questions and some are about fun things we encounter in the ED.”

Rund is looking forward to the cultural aspect of the competition and expects to see the diversity of emergency nursing on display. 

“Emergency nurses have their own terminology and ways of doing things, but they can differ internationally or from coast to coast. You may call a medical device one thing on the East Coast, but the West Coast might call it something completely different,” he said.