Amy Vega Takes A Novel Approach To Nursing Education

Main Category: Nursing / Midwifery
Also Included In: Medical Students / Training
Article Date: 26 May 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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When you think of continuing education for nursing, you may imagine medical textbooks, complicated graphs and loads of acronyms. Well, Amy Glenn Vega hopes to transform continuing education by taking nursing lessons and crafting them into steamy page-turners nurses can read while cozying up next to the fireplace in their favorite comfy chairs.

Amy is a Health Care Educator at the Southern Regional Area Health Education Center in Fayetteville, NC, who has put lots of different theories into practice to reach students over fifteen years. What's the best way to help teach a nurse who's in-demand, underappreciated and overworked? Amy Vega has taken the novel approach. "I'd see lots of nurses sipping coffee and taking a brief escape behind the pages of a novel. Then it dawned on me - what if learning something new was as easy as reading a story?"

Nursing Novellas is a new series that helps nurses learn more about dealing with major interpersonal issues in health care using the fictional cast at Dogwood Regional Hospital in North Carolina. Inside a whirlwind of work, family and love-lives in crisis, the nurses of Med-Surg South find ways to come together and overcome their personal and professional challenges. Real nurses learn through reading and sharing these fictional experiences, and then through discussing them with other nurses.

Amy's first novella, Lions and Tigers and Nurses, deals with the lateral violence that is so rampant in healthcare. According to the American Nurses Association, 60% of workplace assaults take place in healthcare related services. "If lateral violence continues to erode the workforce at this rate, our quality of health care will be dramatically compromised," said Amy Vega. "In my book, I tried to illustrate some of the major learning takeaways about lateral violence in a way that is entertaining and memorable."

Lions and Tigers and Nurses and the second novella, Broken Heart, which is about coping with change and loss, will be available in June from Pritchett & Hull Associates, Inc., Amazon and all major booksellers. Continuing Nursing Education credit is offered and provided by the Southern Regional AHEC. Amy Glenn Vega is an active blogger and her website, nursingnovellas.com, is a place that nurses, nursing students and anyone working in or interested in healthcare can discuss and learn about the major issues and challenges facing healthcare and healthcare professionals.

Amy Glenn Vega is not a nurse, nor does she play one on TV. However, she has worked closely with nurses over the past fifteen years in her career as a health care educator and a former Emergency Medical Technician-Intermediate. She obtained her Masters in Business Administration and Masters in Health Administration at Pfeiffer University, and her Bachelor of Science in Health Education at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She has served in multiple roles in health care education, to include community health, patient education, and staff development. She is currently employed as a Director of Interdisciplinary Continuing Education at Southern Regional Area Health Education Center in Fayetteville, NC. A gifted storyteller, Amy has combined the power of story with teaching in the educational fiction series, "Nursing Novellas." Amy is also a North Carolina Registered Health Educator and was recently appointed as a Fellow to the Academy of Health Care Education Professionals.

Southern Regional AHEC is approved as a provider of continuing nursing education by the North Carolina Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Pritchett & Hull Associates, Inc. publishes healthcare materials for nurses & nursing students that encourage exploring and confronting the challenges of current and future healthcare through personal and staff development in fun, creative and challenging ways. The result is better teaching, better prepared healthcare professionals and better quality of care for our future healthcare challenges. P&H brings People & Health together.

Source
Pritchett & Hull Associates, Inc.

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