| dc.description.abstract | Many rural hospitals rely on family nurse practitioners (FNPs) to provide care in rural health care facilities. With a shortage of medical doctors, FNPs are frequently working independently to fill the need often covering the clinic, hospital, and emergency department. FNPs who work in rural settings need to have comprehensive emergency care education as they are often the only provider available when acute or critically ill patients present to the emergency department. Often, many FNPs working for rural hospitals are required to provide emergency care with little to no emergency care specific education in their curriculum. Providing FNPs with increased emergency preparedness is essential to improve patient safety when critical patients present to rural health care facilities. A lack of preparedness in emergency skills and procedures, due to the infrequency of use and lack of formal education, may affect the provision of high-quality patient care. The purpose of this practice improvement project was to evaluate the educational needs of rural Midwest FNPs covering emergency departments and to develop an educational seminar to increase perceived emergency care skills preparedness. A secondary analysis of a pre-existing 2020 needs assessment survey was conducted to review the prior perceived level of emergency care skills preparedness among rural novice FNPs in the Midwest region which directed the project’s emergency care seminar topic selection. The topics presented during a one-day educational seminar included acute neurological disability, cervical spine management, and emergency airway management. All nine participants attending the educational seminar demonstrated increased levels of perceived preparedness from the pre-and post-survey regarding the three skills. | en_US |
