It’s been a busy time with AKI this month but first I want to mention a conference I attended on technology and education where I had the opportunity to try out ‘Google Glass’ – a pair of specs that provide you with a ‘heads up’ display. It’s a bit like viewing information ‘Terminator’ style! It’s an expensive piece of kit that is still being developed and although I like to try out new technology to enhance the educational experience of students, it’s important not to get carried away.
Education doesn’t have to be all technical to be fun and promote learning, but it does need to be engaging to prevent students from sliding off their chairs in utter boredom! I delivered a session on AKI to pre-registration student nurses earlier this month and included an activity called ‘The Causes of AKI Game’ that I also use in the AKI study day for qualified nurses, mentioned later in this post. Compared to Google Glass it can’t get much simpler. Small groups of students are given an envelope stuffed with causes of AKI and they have to sort them into pre, intra and post renal causes. This gets them to think about the mechanisms leading to AKI and generates discussion, helping to clarify how AKI can be caused and why interventions such as fluid resuscitation and monitoring measures are important.
For the pre-registration nurses this is then followed by a ‘trigger’ activity that they work on over the course of a week and then feedback to the rest of the class. For this I adapted, with permission from the authors, theSheffield Surgical Care resource on AKI that can be found on the Think Kidneys website. Students have to go away and answer the questions posed and then present this to their peers. It’s a popular activity that students immerse themselves in and produce some excellent work. I have also found that some of them go on to use AKI in future presentations for the course which is very encouraging – I recently read a student’s essay that explored the use of fluid balance charts and was excited to see how the kidneys and AKI had moved from the back her mind to become a key consideration in her case study.
Finally this month we held another AKI study day which enables qualified nursing staff to gain knowledge in prevention and early detection of AKI. The Ipsos MORI poll commissioned by Think Kidneys has been useful in starting this day off and I use four questions featured in the survey to establish the group’s knowledge of the kidneys and AKI. It proves to be a good discussion generator and learning tool. Rarely, do people know how hard the kidneys work to keep the body healthy or how, when things go wrong, it affects every aspect of the patient’s body. We also have a presentation from a renal pharmacist that always proves popular and the day features case studies to tie the information provided to practice.
Andrea Fox
Andrea is a teacher at the University of Sheffield‘s School of Nursing & Midwifery. She delivers renal courses, study days and education to pre registration and post registration nurses. She also teaches students on the Health and Human Sciences degree about the kidneys and will be extending this in the next year to global issues in renal care.