Limitations Building a Confident and Competent Pediatric BMT Nursing Staff Jamie L Hillman, MSN, MEd, RN & Jacqueline A Watercutter, MSN, RN, NEA-BC Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH Introduction Literature Review Results Limitations References The following reasons for this intervention were cited in the literature: Many BMT nurses feel they receive little education to prepare them to give quality care to their patients. Many BMT units are integrated into Hem/Onc units and therefore, not seen as a separate specialty with a unique knowledge base. BMT nurses report a need for continuing education to ensure they are up-to-date with the latest treatment options, and evidence-based care for their patients. BMT is a complex specialty that contributes to high levels of stress and burnout; nurses who perceived feeling supported in their work environment report feeling less stress from the demands of patient care. Ensuring the nursing staff receive high quality education regarding the BMT specialty leads to a higher sense of confidence in caring for the patients as well as a higher level of satisfaction with their jobs, consequently resulting in lower stress levels and higher quality patient care. N ationwide Children’s Hospital’s Bone Marrow Transplant Program has the vision to become a national leader in patient care that results in excellent outcomes. The Hematology/Oncology/BMT unit recognized that BMT patients require competent and confident nurses to care for the complexities of the population. With intentional focus to increase quality of care delivered, an education plan was developed to ensure a highly confident and competent nursing staff. The secondary goal was to improve collaboration amongst the BMT team members by increasing awareness of who the team members are. Pre- and Post-Education Survey Insert Footer or Copyright Information Here Discussion Based on the results of the pre-test and post-test, it is clear we started with a nursing staff that was more knowledgeable about BMT care than presumed. Results for the post-test were clearly higher after education was complete, showing that education did, in fact, improve the knowledge base of the nursing staff. The results of the survey conclude that education helped the nursing staff to feel more competent in educating families about their diagnoses and treatment as well as more aware of the resources available to them on the unit. This suggests that nurses felt more a part of the BMT team after the providers spent time educating them about the population. Printed by Pre- and Post-Education Test When it was suggested we form a specialized team of BMT nurses, the staff were apprehensive, stating they did not feel they were adequately educated to give care to the BMT population. As a result, a well- designed educational program was created. The program was a collaborative effort between the Education Specialist of the unit, the BMT physicians and the BMT nurse practitioners to increase awareness of team members. The Educational program consisted of 16 hours of education, coordinated by the Ed. Specialist and provided by the BMT provider group. Educational sessions were kept to 4 hours to ensure retention of information. The education was adapted from the APHON PBMTC lecture series. Nurses were given a pre-test prior to each educational session to both determine their knowledge base and also to focus their attention on the important concepts of the lecture. Nurses were also given a survey regarding their feelings of confidence and support in the BMT role. Nurses were given a post-test to determine retention of knowledge and were also given a post-survey to determine if their feelings of confidence and support improved. Development of Educational Program The limitations of this project include: Multiple teaching strategies: live presentation with providers and DVD available of the live presentation if staff were unable to attend, making it difficult to determine the effectiveness of education for everyone. Not everyone participating was able to attend the educational offerings live, so pre-test results included multiple people on different days, making the results difficult to generalize to the entire group. Not all participants completed the pre- and post-survey, again making it difficult to generalize results to the group as a whole.