RN
Jewish General Hospital, Canada
I have been an emergency room nurse for 15 years. I successfully wrote my emergency certification exam about 5 years into my practice and since then, I have been looking for ways to advance the nursing profession in Quebec. I have presented morbidity and mortality rounds for nurse for roughly 4 years until the budget was cut. I remain involved with practice change on my unit, including a current project to standardize the administration of sub-dissociative doses of ketamine for CT scans. I am also the ED representative on the Antimicrobial Stewardship subcommittee. I also try to attend webinars and conferences on various topics and have continued my education, mostly online.
After having completed a Forensic Nursing certificate at Pennsylvania State University, I realized that I wanted to focus on improving medico-legal care for victims of sexual assault in my city; Montreal, Quebec. Unfortunately, SANEs are not recognized in Quebec so that has significantly limited my ability but I refused to give up. I have dedicated a large amount of time over the past seven years to educating all branches of healthcare providers in hopes of increasing the odds of a victim having contact with a provider who has the appropriate knowledge to provide the best care possible within our healthcare system.
With that as my goal, I have participated in resident teaching within my ED (one hour mini-sessions for small groups), I have guest lectured at McGill Emergency Medicine Grand Rounds, I have developed an accredited 2 hour lecture for nurses that was offered at McGill, I guest lecture to small groups of nurses as part of the community rotation for the BNI program at McGill. Additionally, I have been fortunate enough to present twice at IAFN conferences (90 minute sessions in 2018 and in 2021) and have been part of a panel discussion at the AQII conference here in Quebec in 2020. Since 2021, I have also began guest lecturing as part of the crisis intervention course for the pre-hospital care program to ensure that new paramedics also have the most education available. This autumn, I was invited to be part of a team in order to create a simulation day for OBS residents in order to expose them to working with victims of sexual assault. Lastly, I have developed a procedure for the management of victims of sexual assault who arrive at a hospital that cannot provide appropriate medico-legal care that will hopefully be implemented fully in the upcoming months.
