Nursing Grand Rounds

 I presented our comfort care program today at Nursing Grand Rounds.  I was able to tell other nurses in the hospital about our program.  You would be surprised at how many people don't know what goes on in our little world of OB nursing.  We tend to be shadowed by so many other things in the hospital.

Today I got to change some of that.  The hospital holds 'nursing grand rounds' every couple of months.  New ideas are presented.  Practice changes are presented as well.  All nurses within the hospital are invited to attend.  This months topic was the end of life care..

Our hospital recently started a change group / or committee if you will, looking at end of life practices through out the hospital.  I am on that committee as the labor and delivery representative.  We are trying to make sure that we are consistent house wide with how we treat our dying patients and their families.
So today we presented our different programs to the hospital.  We focused on the perinatal comfort care program, adult palliative care and hospice and our end of life committee and what we are working on.

Since I work in labor and delivery and also help run our comfort care program, I was chosen as the speaker for the OB portion of the presentation.  I was able to share a bit about what we do and why we provide these services to our families.  I didn't have long and I had to take a 4 hour class and condense it down to minutes but I think I accomplished my goals.  I was able to share information and inform those in the hospital that have no idea of the things we do up on our floor.

 The question / answer time was quite valuable.  The people in the audience asked very good questions such as "what would happen if a mother went to the ICU and her dying baby was still alive? Would the baby be transferred to ICU also?"  (this question came from an ICU nurse...dreading the idea of having to go way outside of her comfort zone and take care of an infant also.)   I reassured her that the OB team would continue to care for the baby and the ICU nurse would not have to do that.  Mom could be transferred to the ICU and the baby would be admitted to the nursery with OB nurses caring for him or her.  The baby could be brought to the mom in the ICU with an OB nurse in attendance (collaborative care at it's best).  Thankfully we have never had a comfort care mom end up in the ICU as of yet.  And I hope we never do!

The best part of the presentation was when the power point quit working on me!!   Here I am talking away and it won't advance...I look out at the audience and see my manager and the Mother-baby manager plus other white coated people and I think to myself..."what would a good speaker do?" "Oh crap, now what!?!?!"
I make a quick recovery - make some stupid comment about the power point "dying" - to which an audience member states "Seems appropriate for today's topic" and then I say I am just going to move on while someone else fixes the power point.  I tell them to imagine my next slide which talks about resources for the nurses....and I just go on to tell them verbally about it.
Thank goodness I knew what my slides were about.  I knew the order and had reviewed it prior to speaking!!  Such a test of my speaking abilities - HA!   Presenting was pretty fun - even if I was a tad nervous  :)


To end the day I met a couple of my friends at Citrus City Grille for a little girls night out.  It is so hard to socialize at work so we had decided to meet for dinner.  We wanted to catch up and talk without being interrupted by phones or patients or crying babies.
So we met in downtown Orange.

I had the happy hour tri tip melts and a spring salad - yummy.  Plus we all ordered a different flavor of martini.  Citrus City Grille has a large martini menu.  Mine was called "the Favorite" - it was a watermelon, pineapple, sweet and sour flavored drink.  I think mine was the best ~

After dinner we walked over and sat in the circle area of Orange.  We sat by the fountain and just talked and caught up on each other's lives.  I have such great friends that I happen to work with.  We have so much in common and share a common interest in moms and babies.   I am lucky to have such great girlfriends.  I know that not everyone has the type of friendships that last a life time.  Ones where we truly care about each other, attend each others weddings, help deliver each others babies and stick through things even when we may not see totally eye to eye.

Thanks for a great night out Tammy and Sarah...wish I would have had someone take a picture of the three of us!
I heart you guys!
Debbie