A library of 30 on-demand sessions from Emergency Nursing 2021 will be available through Jan. 31 alongside recordings of sessions from the Live Program. Registered conference attendees can view these presentations at their convenience anywhere internet access is available.
The on-demand programming includes ePoster presentations, an introduction to ENA University, and sessions on emergency department leadership, ED superstitions, forensic nursing, health equity, behavioral health and more.
Below are just a few on-demand sessions covering timely topics in emergency nursing today:
Pass the Mallomars, Man: Educational Deficits and Changes in Workload After Cannabis Legalization
In recent years, cannabis use has been decriminalized or legalized across the United States, in Canada and in Mexico. More than half of U.S. states allow medical marijuana use and an increasing number of states allow recreational use, creating a measurable strain on emergency departments, recent research shows.
In Pass the Mallomars, Man: Educational Deficits and Changes in Workload After Cannabis Legalization, ENA Director of Emergency Nursing Research Lisa Wolf discusses the findings of a qualitative study published in 2020 on the emergency nursing workload implications of the legalization of marijuana.
“A number of researchers report increases in ED visits and hospitalizations in the context of broader use of cannabis,” she said. “What we see a lot of is the cyclic vomiting syndromes; pure intoxication; acute psychiatric symptoms and comorbidities such as polysubstance use, so you have your folks coming in who have a whole lot of stuff on board and unintentional pediatric exposures.”
The study includes a survey comparing U.S. ED experiences with cannabis-attributable ED visits in other countries where cannabis use has been decriminalized. The responses revealed a need for cannabis-related education for emergency nurses.
“We find that survey respondents were really clear in identifying gaps in public and provider education — so education for patients and nurses and physicians — that impede clinical decision-making in patient care,” Wolf said.
Design and Implementation of a Low Cost, Open Access Digital Stethoscope for Social Distanced Medical Care in the Emergency Department
COVID-19 spurred a sharp increase in the demand for telemedicine. It also highlighted the challenges of conducting in-person patient treatment from a distance.
Craig Nuttall, associate teaching professor in the nursing program at Brigham Young University in Utah, and Chia-Chi Teng, emeritus faculty in the BYU School of Technology, developed a cost-effective solution for obtaining a high-quality assessment of the heart and lungs at a distance.
“We designed a low-cost digital stethoscope that can work both for the COVID social-distancing type situation and for telemedicine,” Nuttall said. “We made this with off-the-shelf components, you don’t have to use any tools to assemble it and we use open source 3-D printed parts for the bell-end of the stethoscope.”
During the pandemic, health care workers have needed a way to perform cardiac and pulmonary auscultation when patient visits are conducted remotely and while protecting themselves and patients from possible COVID-19 infection during in-person assessments.
Although some might be tempted to skip this step under the less-than-ideal conditions of the pandemic, Nuttall cautions against doing so.
“Auscultation is an essential part of the patient assessment,” he said. “It can provide the health care worker with information that no other test can, not even a chest X-ray.”
In Design and Implementation of a Low Cost, Open Access Digital Stethoscope for Social Distanced Medical Care in the Emergency Department, Nuttall explains how their $10 creation, which pairs with a smartphone app, was developed. The presentation includes information on new features being developed and how to access the open-source instructions for building a digital stethoscope that integrates with the Stethogram app.
Dancing with the Devil: Mitigating Violence in the Emergency Department
Health care workers are four times more likely to have a serious workplace injury from violence than workers in private industry, a statistic Melanie Gibbons Hallman shares in her session, Dancing with the Devil: Mitigating Violence in the Emergency Department.
“Even though most of the events that happen are verbal assaults and threats, you have to be very aware that it can escalate way beyond that and that it’s not just the patient that you have to be concerned with,” said Hallman, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “It can also be family members, visitors, persons who are coming in to cause issues with the patient, and [it] also can be from other health care workers.”
More than 80 percent of ED nurses have been the victim of a physical assault, including being pulled or pushed, at work.
“Violence in the workplace is real. It’s an ongoing threat to individuals in emergency settings, and we must be aware,” Hallman said. “We must learn ways to keep this from happening or to lower the risk for this and know what to do if it does occur and the best ways to mitigate and protect ourselves.”
She reviews triggers of violence, early detection skills, effective management of violent situations and best practices for physical action, when necessary, in the face of violence.
The best outcomes begin with knowledge, prevention measures and timely reporting, Gibbons Hallman said.
These and other EN21 sessions can be viewed on the EN21 virtual meeting platform.
Registration, which includes access to EN21 On-demand content, is available for $199 until Oct. 20, after which the registration price increases to $250. Registration closes Dec. 1.