Announcements and featured resources for Library Users of Ascension Wisconsin Health Intranets (including legacy Affinity/Ministry/Fox Valley, Columbia-St. Mary's, and Wheaton-Franciscan).
Ascension Wisconsin Librarians support your health care decisions with evidence-based research and fulltext resources.
| March 2022 See what your fellow nurses are reading! Browse this month's round-up of 10 top articles from Lippincott's prestigious list of nursing journals. Also: Hear Nursing Perspectives On Adapting to Changes in Healthcare by Attending the Upcoming Webinar "Nursing’s Wake-up Call: Change is Now Non-negotiable" |  |
Did you know ... AORN offers a Clinical Nursing Consult Line?
If you don't find answers in the current AORN Guidelines provided by AW Library Services, or by the usual library research, AORN's Clinical Nursing Consult Line may be an option to tap into this specialty expertise!
The AORN nurse consultants can be reached by calling AORN Customer Service at (800) 755-2676.
AORN's Clinical Nursing Consult LineAORN's Nursing Team is available during this time to answer hands-on questions.
This service is free for active AORN members and is $120.00 for non-members (Sorry, your Librarians are not AORN Members). Give AORN a call during these times, with your Member ID number ready, and they will get you transferred to the consult line for assistance.
Working with Lauren Schmidt of The Resource Group and Rachel Braasch from Clinical Professional Development, we've added reference and training material about the new SwabCaps being implemented due to the current Prevantics shortage.
We know some AW Nurses already know and love these products; and for others, it's entirely new.
This info will be available at your fingertips on the following AW Nursing LibGuides:
Nursing Practice Alert: Prevantics Pads and Swab Shortage: Scope and Impact
from Ascension Nursing's COE
SwabCap Reference Guide (pdf from ICUMed)
SwabCap bacterial contamination reduction info sheet (pdf from ICUMed)
SwabCap Inservice Training Video (ICUMed)
SwabCap and SwabTip Disinfecting Caps: Training Videos
Poster with QR Codes for inservice training videos for SwabCap and SwabTip Disinfecting Caps.
IV Therapy - Invasive Lines Policy (PolicyStat for Ascension Wisconsin)
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| Policies by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org Original Image. |
For those of you needing to update policies (like me), consider the following:
Read on for tips on discerning policies from procedures:
Key Point: If it's more like a procedure and would be part of a procedure manual (think of the nursing skills in NRC Plus), it probably does NOT belong in a policy, esp. if you can find that info somewhere else. Link to it, but don't re-hash it in a policy.
Try to not include procedural specifics in policies that could get us into regulatory trouble if we didn't follow it to the letter, or if it wasn't updated frequently enough to reflect current practice. The specific procedures may differ by site, but the overall policy applies statewide.
Policies are not the same as procedures, though there may be some overlap.
Reference the MHC Policy Procedure Resource Definitions
Policy Procedure Resource Definitions - PolicyStat ID=5752739 [This one covers Ascension Wisconsin as of 2018.]
A definite course or method of action selected from among alternatives and in light of given conditions to guide and determine present and future decisions
Policies usually:
Have widespread application
Are non-negotiable, change infrequently
Are expressed in broad terms
Are statements of what and/or why
Answer major operational issues
The manner of performing something; a method or technique.
A series of steps for doing something.
Procedures usually:
Have a narrower focus
Are subject to change and continuous improvement
Are a more detailed description of activities
Are statements of how, when and/or who & sometimes what
Detail a process
Supplemental guidance
Helpful information for employees to refer to about a specific topic
Usually referred to after looking at the policy
No standard format
From around the Web:
The Key Difference between Policy vs. Procedures - Compliance Bridge (c2017)
> Nevermind that they are trying to sell their own software, this page does a great job of
1) defining policies and procedures,
2) explaining the differences,
3) and how they work together.
What is a Policy vs. a Procedure - PowerDMS (c2020)
Policy vs. Process vs. Procedure: What's the Difference? - Triaster Blog (c2021)
Differences Between Policies, Procedures, Protocols, Guidance and PPPGs - Bettal Quality Consultancy (2020)
Developing Policies Protocols and Procedures - [Not sure where this comes from or by whom, but it answers many questions on this topic.]
Page 13-14 look at the definitions and differences between these 3 under: Are Policies, Procedures & Protocols the same thing?
 The content of Clinical Key is constantly being updated. Here are the February highlights. |
Updated Clinical Overviews – Selected Topics
Books Added – CK Global
Henrietta Lacks: The Mother of Modern Medicine
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
This post is a summary and follow-up to some of the things I learned about
Download the complete reader’s guide (pdf) for book discussion groups. It includes:
Bright Talk from November 2019Presented by:Chris Belter, Informationist at the NIH Library, and Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski,
PhD, ICSR Advisory Board Member & VP, Elsevier
About this talk:In 1951, a young black woman named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with
cervical cancer. During her treatment, her doctor took a sample of her cells
and tried to grow them in culture. The cells, called HeLa cells, were the first
human cells that could be grown in a laboratory and are still the most widely
studied cells in biomedical research, having led to treatments for diseases
such as polio, HIV, and cancer.
