When acute-care patients are your primary responsibility, do you feel that being assigned to palliative-care patients—even though they are only a small part of your overall workload—interferes with your primary task of providing quality acute care?
How do nurse case managers differ from case managers in other disciplines.
These are two of the discussions currently taking place online in new communities established by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) to help members network with and learn from each other. The Community/Public Health Nursing Community and the Palliative Care/Hospice Nursing Community were launched in March.
The community initiative began in 2006 at the recommendation of the 2003-05 Chapter/Community Building Advisory Council and continued under the direction of the 2005-07 Community Building Implementation Task Force. These communities are being established as an STTI member benefit to encourage networking and knowledge dissemination.
Each community has its own online site where members can have discussions, and share documents and Web links. By connecting like-minded nurses worldwide for the purpose of sharing ideas, challenges, resources and information, these communities help advance patient health.
Volunteer facilitators began setting up the communities in October, learning how to use the software and selecting topics and discussion leaders. What is planned for these communities? At this point, the list of objectives is rather brief—on purpose—as facilitators want to remain flexible and allow discussions and activities to go in directions most advantageous to community members.
Kyeongra Yang, PhD, MPH, RN, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, is the facilitator for the Community/Public Health Community. She observes: “This community forum could advance our practice and research by sharing our professional experience and expertise in community-oriented nursing. If STTI members are interested in community/public health, they could also learn about possible professional opportunities or areas from our forum. If they are teachers for community health courses, they could learn information as to how other teachers educate students about community health nursing, including new or innovative teaching strategies for possible application for the course.”
Any active member of STTI can participate in these communities. To join, send your name, e-mail address, member number and the name of the community you wish to join to communities@stti.org. We will respond with information on how to log onto that community’s site. RNL
—Teresa Ransdell, MPA, CAE, global chapter and community advisor, Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International
