Clinicals Week 8

For the week of November 2nd, I spent a total of 5 hours with my preceptor. I accompanied him to multiple meetings. We went to a Respiratory Therapy Leadership meeting. O.C. is invited to this meeting because he is the director of the Rehab and Transitional Care Units where many patients have trachs. This meeting was pretty mundane, but I did notice that some of the RT's seemed to lead the group more than others, regardless of their titles. My preceptor and I discussed this after the meeting. He confirmed that the ones I had identified as unofficial leaders were exactly that. He called them natural leaders. He explained to me that those are the types of people that he takes care to develop and encourage to advance their careers.
We also attended a meeting with the nurse educator for the 4th floor. They are developing a charge nurse workshop for new and existing charge nurses on the unit. They discussed many topics to be incorporated into the workshop, including managing up, dealing with frustrated families, and dealing with difficult physicians. It was good to see how these types of education are developed. I have been to many of them, but have never been involved in the development.