Helping young people paint the canvas of life

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• Teaching Suggestions
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• Sharon A. McNamara, RN

The following poem was left for her mother by Mary Knaub. Mary's mother, a perioperative colleague, believes Mary wrote this poem as a teenager.

Canvas of Life!

Every life is a canvas.

Every motion, every thought

Another stroke of the brush.

Every success is a color,

And so is every defeat,

Raising us to new heights,

Forcing us to do better.

You are the artist.

You are the painter.

You fill the canvas with

your dreams!

If your vision is clear

And your dedication complete,

If you look inside yourself

And know the source

of your strength,

If you work and you believe,

Anything is possible!

Can you feel the aura of openness to new ideas and dreams? Can you imagine a young person painting a canvas, creating a future in which anything is possible? I think this is a beautiful metaphor for grade school- and high school-aged students who are out there in every community waiting for a peri-operative nurse to help them color their canvas. November 13 to 19, 2005, is Perioperative Nurse Week. The theme this year is “Perioperative Nurses: Vital to Care, Knowledge to Share.” My vision is that chapters, state councils, specialty assemblies, and every member will go out and start to grow a perioperative nurse.

Some of the important characteristics of high school and grade school students are that they want to make a difference, and they are technically savvy. Where else can they make a difference, one patient at a time, and do it using stereotactics, robotics, minimally invasive surgery, “and exciting new technologies that will be developed in their lifetimes? Charge up your chapter and use Perioperative Nurse Week 2005 to start your “Vital to Care, Knowledge to Share” program. Share with young people the difference you make to your patients and their family members every day.

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Teaching Suggestions 

Imagine if every member visited a group of children to share the joy of perioperative nursing. What colors would the children see as the nurse enters the room in scrub attire with masks and hats for each child? This strategy can make children less afraid of the people behind the masks and allow them to play perioperative nurse dress up. Ask if any of them has had an operation. Let them talk and share their experiences. Acknowledge any fears they voice, and educate them about the environment in the preoperative area, OR, and postanes-thesia care unit. You could make a virtual tour videotape or slide presentation—people of all ages love pictures.

Bring a tray of basic instruments. Allow the children to handle the hemo-stats, retractors, and forceps, and show them that there are only two sharp instruments on the tray, a pair of scissors and a scalpel. All of the other instruments are for healing. Bring the game Operation; it provides great run at any age.

Some curricula are very structured, and teachers may not be able to afford to give up time to teach about perioperative nursing or the surgical experience. Ask what is being taught in health or science classes. You can teach about the digestive, skeletal, or integumentary systems from real experience.

Maybe the teacher would like students to have a lesson in hand washing. This subject can be a lot of fun if you use the FROG method. The acronym stands for friction rubs out germs. Take alcohol hand rub and demonstrate the correct procedure. When they do it correctly, the students are rewarded with frog stickers. Any kind of frog wear, such as t-shirts or hats, can color the whole experience a fun green. We use this technique monthly at WakeMed Surgical Services, Raleigh, NC. Even the docs participate.

Don't limit your reach only to classrooms, there are Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, Pioneers, Camp Fire USA groups, 4-H, Boys and Girls Clubs, after school programs, and church groups. Anywhere that young people are, AORN members need to be. For older groups, consider teaching first aid or safety. You can teach bandaging and pressure points for hemorrhage. This is a perfect introduction to explain how nurses are patient safety advocates.

If you can arrange to have a group come into your OR for an open house, you can peak their interest with demonstrations of the technology. Remember, they are techies and used to the hand-eye coordination of computer games. Set up a minimally invasive procedure room and let them try to retrieve candy or small prizes from a hollowed out pumpkin or a box using laparoscopic instruments. If you are fortunate enough to have a robot, let them perform the same maneuvers using the robot, and watch their astonishment at how easy the robot is to manipulate. It is interesting to see how quickly children can use the technology while their adult chaperones struggle.

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• A nurse helps some young attendees dress in full personal protective gear for a mock joint procedure during an open house cosponsored by WakeMed Health and Hospitals and Capitol AORN of North Carolina.

Partner with your orthopedic industry representatives who can bring in bones and let the youngsters drill and place plates and screws. They may even lend hip and knee implants for you to use. Demonstrate the electrosur-gical unit. Pacemakers, vascular grafts, intraocular lenses, and pressure equalization tubes are all interesting to young people.

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Helpful Resources 

The Perioperative Nursing: Introduction at the High/Grade School Level Task Force has been busy creating resources for you to use for your adventures in molding young minds toward considering a career in perioperative nursing. Just visit the AORN web site at http://www.AORN.org/about/nurseweek.htm. Table 1 lists the web resources that are available.

Table 1. AORN Internet Resources^*

Milton Bradley Operation is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc, Pawtucket, RI.

* These resources are available from AORN Online at http://www.aorn.org/about/nurseweek.htm.

Two vital resources that you can download for free from the AORN web site are “Inspiring Tomorrow's Perioperative Nurses,” which is geared toward high school-age students and “Reaching Out to Grade School Children.” The first resource includes a PowerPoint presentation and script demonstrating the roles, benefits, education, traits, and skills for perioperative nursing. It also explains what a professional organization is, using AORN as the example, of course. If you are planning an open house, there is an excellent check list available.

The second resource explains student outreach activities, school and classroom visits, how to plan, characteristics of students in the various primary grades, and lesson plans. A pre-visit information sheet, discussion starter questions, and ideas for activities for young children also are included. Your fellow AORN members and Headquarters staff members have worked diligently to give you what you need to recruit future perioperative nurses. These resources can be used year round and certainly could lead to some very impressive projects to be creatively presented for chapter awards.

Send information in to Headquarters about your chapter activities. We want to know how many different schools, groups, and children we reached during Perioperative Nurse Week. Can you think of a better way to celebrate than to share our diverse, creative career with potential nurses? Plant the seeds of perioperative nursing early, and we can all enjoy the harvest that will produce nurses who will continue the tradition of providing safe patient care to the communities of our world. You are an expert with diverse knowledge, and you have a wonderful career to share. Imagine the legacy you will leave if you influence one child to choose nursing. It will be the best hour you ever spent. “If you work and you believe, anything is possible.”