Proposing Change
This is the Final Project Proposal for Clinical Group 8. Our project examines the use of oral care and how it is used to prevent tracheostomy infections. Our project outlines how education on oral care will be implemented and evaluate the effectiveness of the education. Authors are Brett Collard, Hanna Freeman, Grace Howard, Sophia Jones, Shannon O’Roak, Celine Pelton, and Rhiannon Regan. If there are any questions about this project, please contact myself, Shannon O’Roak, at @soroak
Since researching and composing a project proposal, I have learned a lot about our topic, which is the affect oral care has on tracheostomy related infections. I always knew that oral care was vitally important to a patient’s overall health and to infection prevention. What I didn’t realize is how that risk increases when a patient has a tracheostomy. I believe I was unaware of this because my clinical this semester was the first time I had ever performed tracheostomy care, or even seen a tracheostomy in the patient care setting. Our floor had many respiratory patients, but the one I remember the most was my patient the first week of clinical. I performed oral care with a CHG solution and was able to perform tracheal suction on this patient, which helped me make the connection between oral care, and how easily an infection could become present in tracheostomy patients.
In relation to our project proposal, our team did need to revise our proposal a few times to narrow down the specifics of what we were looking to educate the unit on and what we would be evaluating. Narrowing down our proposal I believe was helpful, because it allowed us to really focus on the benefits of oral care, and the risk factors associated with not performing it. Our findings through our project will impact how I do oral care when I am a nurse. I currently work as a CNA, so I know oral care can be easily overlooked, but I want to participate in oral care with my patients and educate them on the importance of performing oral care on themselves, if possible.
Our clinical group/team has been very successful regarding communication, completing assignments thoroughly, and submitting assignments on time. Our team has a group chat that we communicate through when anyone has questions about the project, to assign roles, and to coordinate times to meet and work on the project. We have only experienced minor challenges throughout our project, which is that we sometimes have difficulty finding a good time for all of us to meet. We have worked through this challenge by planning meeting times and specific roles of the project further in advance. I think this experience has prepared me well for collaborating on an evidence-based project when I begin working as a nurse.
