Source: United States Navy (Medical)
Critical multidisciplinary skill sustainment training included a little faux assistance at Naval Hospital Bremerton, February 11, 2025.
As Navy Nurse Corps officers, civilian registered nurses and hospital corpsmen filed into NHB’s Skills Fair, amongst the training modules designed to refresh their proficiency levels reclined a Mr. [mannequin] Smith.
Mr. Smith was acknowledged as a 43-year old bedridden patient who had been in the hospital for the past four days, suffering from a chest injury caused by a car accident. His lung had a compressed injury resulting in a chest tube for hemothorax. There were other apparent health complications, including medication management and patient-safety needs.
Nurse Corps officers assigned to the main hospital, from the branch health clinics located on Naval Base Kitsap and Naval Base Everett, civilian registered nurses and hospital corpsmen
were tasked to determine what was wrong with Mr. Smith, as well as detect any errors which could compromise patient care and patient safety within the inpatient room setting.
“This is getting nursing back to nursing,” said Lt. Essie Gutierrez, Directorate of Health Services division officer who organized the event. “We can touch, we can feel, we can do hands-on training. We hope that skills someone hasn’t used in a while get refreshed, so they get more confident in being able to use their skills.
According to Gutierrez, Navy Nurse Corps officers are required to be able to handle their duties when called upon and must perform a minimum of 144 hours per year of clinical sustainment competency. Joint collaboration with Madigan Army Medical Center is a viable option, but not everyone can afford to take the time away from their current responsibilities.
“Our chief nursing officer decided to do a skills fair here. It is incumbent upon us, even without an inpatient unit, to ensure we have our clinical sustainment in our hospital by setting up these training modules,” Gutierrez said.
The mannequin Mr. Smith was part of the “What’s Wrong with the Room” training module. A lengthy list of mistakes was reported by the nurses and corpsmen, which included noting that the patient bed was too high, and the patient had no way to relieve himself. The patient also had no visible identification, lacked nonskid socks, and had an infection bleeding around a chest tube. There was also medication left on a side table by the inpatient bed and more.
“The What’s Wrong with the Room, is great because it encompasses medication administration, errors with the patient and errors with the inpatient room setting which we just don’t get here,” remarked Gutierrez.
The other training scenarios included a Wound Care module, which featured such instruction as burn wound care, wound cleaning and irrigation of traumatic wound(s), and dealing with pressure injuries.
The Airway module went over oxygen therapy with nasal cannula and oxygen mask, cervical collar management and electrocardiogram use.
The Lines and Specimen Collection module discussed such needs as urinary catheter use, blood product administration and intravenous therapy.
The Postmortem Care module covered grief support, operational stress control and peer debriefing.
Each participant was provided a passport, designed as a guide for each of the five training modules. Upon completion of each instructional session, their passport would be stamped as having completed that module.
Gutierrez affirmed that Nurse Corps officer clinical sustainment is vital for mission readiness and is in keeping with the Navy surgeon general’s priority of being a ready medical force able to support a medically ready force. “Having our corpsmen taking part to improve their knowledge base and any other staff is a plus,” she said.
The two-day event was tailored to provide critical multidisciplinary skill sustainment training which nurses in an ambulatory care setting like NHB might not use as much as they used to.
One module at a time.