Imagine a job where you go to a new location every day. You work with different people each time, report to a different supervisor, follow a different set of procedures at each place and use differently-calibrated machines.
Now imagine that people's lives depend on you doing your job quickly and correctly.
That's an extreme example of what nursing students can face for the hands-on portion of their training. Normally, they switch between area hospitals to gain firsthand knowledge. Such a set up can cause confusion and means starting anew at each facility.
But at Valley Hospital, student nurses are there to stay under the innovative Home Hospital Project.
The first class to benefit from the program, eight students strong, completed their rotation on a medical-surgical unit Dec. 13. In future semesters, they'll complete rotations in obstetrics, pediatrics and critical care.
A visit to Valley Hospital showed just how well the program was working.
This day, the student nurses were going over charts and assembling medications for patients as staff nurse Linda Varley oversaw their work. The licensed practical nurse passed along bits of wisdom learned from experience, like when a certain liquid prescription had to be administered.
"This one doesn't smell good, doesn't taste good," Varley told the students. "It's like rotten eggs so I give it to them mixed in a little bit of orange juice. Then I give them the rest of the OJ as a chaser."
The student nurses said by staying at one hospital, they felt more at ease, better able to concentrate on the tasks at hand. They knew where supplies were kept, who to go to when authorization was needed, even mundane things like where to dispose of dirty bed linens.
Having those issues out of the way, they said, meant they could focus on nursing, on the patients.
If they were switching hospitals for their one-day-a-week, on-site training, "it would take about five weeks before I felt comfortable," said Shauna Albrecht, student nurse. "This way, it takes a couple days."
The other seven students in the class were Kendra Moulton, Jullianne Kobasic, Aimèe Josè, Ken Napier, Tina Bartek, Gladhes Junio and Zeferina Padilla.
The Home Hospital Project was created through a partnership between the UNLV School of Nursing and Valley Hospital, Desert Springs Hospital (both members of The Valley Health System) and University Medical Center.
Each of the three hospitals designated a nursing-staff member with a master of science in nursing to work with students in their first semester of the four-semester nursing program.
Mary Lou LaGrutta, nursery manager, oversaw the skills lab at UNLV for the eight students. She also oversaw the hands-on clinical portion of their training at Valley Hospital.
"I think the Home Hospital Project is a great advantage for the student nurses because they're acclimated to their surroundings. They've met the staff, met the charge nurses, know their way around," LaGrutta said.
A patient, Rose Herington, a retired phone operator, said she liked having student nurses tend to her.
"Besides, they have to practice on somebody," she said.
Over the next two years, the Home Hospital Project will be evaluated to determine whether students experience less anxiety and stress and display improved academic performance as determined by standardized tests, their grade-point average and how well they do on their licensing exams.
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