Aware of the smartphone addictive

The first of our guaranteed preceptor techniques in session 3 is the ninth in our series of 16 techniques. The first technique I call “No Phones Zone.” The idea here is that phone should be silenced and put away other than for breaks. One of the things we’ve noticed over the last several years is the advent of smartphones totally change the world. And most students are probably addicted to the use of their smartphones. In fact, most preceptor probably addicted as well. Preceptor has to realize the smartphone. Student checking the smartphone for facebook input or emails or instant messages, whatever the case may be, can be very distracting, especially in the patient care area.

So strict limits need to be set and student use of smartphones while they’re on the rotation. Perhaps, it will be restricted to certain times during the day or certain locations where it’s okay for them to catch up on the information they’ve been receiving on the phone. But when they’re on rounds in a patient care area or when the meeting with a preceptor, to discuss their patients. They should not be distracted by constantly looking at their phones. Some type of policy needs to be set forth by the preceptor. Texting, instant messaging, checking social media, emailing, all such activities can be very distracting to students and also disruptive to others.

So other patient care providers in the hospital might be concerned about interacting with students who are constantly checking their phones when they are in the patient care area. Next guaranteed preceptor technique is the “Minutes Matter.” Preceptors need to show up on time and they need to expect their students to show up on time. If a rotation is going to provide an efficient learning experience, you gonna minimize the down time wasted time as much as possible. If a meeting is called for three o’clock for students to present patients to a preceptor. Students should be held accountable show up at three o’clock and the preceptor should show up at three o’clock as well.

If students are supposed to be in the hospital at 8 am. They should be held accountable, show up at 8am. Students need to understand during rotation that time is important. And people in the hospital have other responsibilities and just providing them with training. So students need to be appreciative of that fact. And pay attention to where they’re supposed to be and when they’re supposed to be there. It’s up to the preceptor to set those guidelines. Make sure that students understand that minutes matter. John Wooden was coaching his practices with his players were known for the detailed planning and the minute-by-minute execution of the practice. It was a stickler for making use of every minute during a basketball practice.

And it paid off with those ten national championships. Activities should be well planned meetings should be organized to ensure the effective use of time. If preceptor is going to be meeting with students on a daily basis, the activities of those meetings should be well hold out. So there’s not a lot of downtime or when students are presenting to the preceptor. And they should understand that when they show up to a meeting with the preceptor. It’s going to be an efficient use of time and held to a minimum. Preceptors can benefit from this type of time management. Again, because they have many other responsibilities. And the time that spent with students is going to take away those other responsibilities.

So it’s not to say that students and preceptor shouldn’t spend a lot of time together. It’s important for the preceptor to make sure that time is well spent. I like to share some forms with yo.u. It may be difficult to read these forms. I’m showing them mainly as an example and I’ll highlight some of the aspects of these forms that I’d like to emphasize. So if you can’t see the form extremely well, I will walk you through it. I’m just trying to provide examples, so the types of forms that can be very beneficial during a rotation. This first form is a drug information worksheet. The students would use to answer drug information questions, a commonly used form in rotations.

You’ll note at the bottom of the form that calls for a classification of their requests. Now this serves a couple of purposes. To have the student fill this form out when they answer a drug information question. Provide guidance to the students as to the proper sequence. It makes sure that they pay close attention to the classification of the nature of the request, before they begin to try to answer it. This process of classifying the request also ensures that this exercise is going to optimize their use of critical thinking. Because in order to classify a drug information request. That request have to be analyzed. It’s not possible to classify our request accurately without a careful analysis of the request itself.

So it helps to ensure that the students are achieving the deep learning necessary that results from good critical thinking. By forcing them to analyze the nature of the request. By documenting the nature. Having to select from this list of possible classifications. That documentation is something that the preceptor can then evaluate when evaluating the overall performance of the question the student in answering the drug information question. So it guides the student and also facilitates the evaluation of the preceptor of the students performance. Next form is a standard patient monitoring form. Every hospitals monitoring form is probably going to be different. In many cases, the hospital will have a standard monitoring form that is used.

If by chance there isn’t a standard monitoring form, the preceptor should develop one. The idea of a patient monitoring form is to guide the students to collect the proper information in the proper sequence. It’s a document that information. It’s able to document information over a period of time to identify trends. So there maybe an aspect of the form that enables students to record laboratory data over several days. The trends can be apparent. Whatever the case may be, whether it’s a special form that developed by the preceptor or standard hospital form, or hybrid of the two. The idea is for the form to guide the students experience.

So it becomes second nature to the students as how to monitor a patient over a period of time. This type of a form also makes it much easier for the preceptor to evaluate the quality with which the student is monitoring patients. It’s much easier to take a quick look at the data gathered on the form. To see how complete it is and how accurate it is. Rather than spending a lot of time having the students explain to the preceptor what kind of monitoring they’ve been doing. So increases efficiency for the preceptor and it increases learning for the student. This is an example of an assessment form. It’s actually a form that I showed during session two.

The form for assessing a verbal presentation by a student. Now if you see the third criteria on this form, is enthusiasm, engagement, confidence, appearance and comfort speaking. It communicates to the student that they’re going to be evaluated on the nature of the presentation in terms of how much energy they put into. Whether they speak in a more energetic tone or if they speak in a very mild monotone that’s difficult to hear. So it communicates the student that we want them to have good volume to speak clearly and to have some energy as they speak. And they’ll be evaluated on that. One thing that might point out.

If you look at the rating of this particular assignment, there are four rating levels. We talked about this in the assessment discussions of Session two. They are four rating levels. If you can read the rating levels for enthusiasm, engagement and confidence that third criteria.

That the third assessment level, which is worth 7 to 7.9 points says: “appeared disinterested, distracted and unengaged at times”. The fourth level is described as “unenthusiastic, did not seem to care amd distracted.” I find it very difficult to distinguish between those two levels of assessment. This is an example of using four levels of rating. It might be a bit too much. I think the person who developed this form at a difficult time distinguishing between the third level of the rating and the lowest level of the rating. It may have been better for this particular assignment. To instead, use a three-part rating system that only required three levels to be defined for each of the criteria.