Our Services: Presentations for nurses

Seminar topics presented by Patricia Iyer

Seminars for nurses increase skills and knowledge and reduce liability risks. Risk management topics may be presented in your facility in one hour or longer sessions. An experienced expert witness and nursing author shares lessons learned from years of reviewing medical records for liability. Seminars focus on leadership skills for nurses, nursing documentation, handling incidents, aging simulation, caring for the nursing home population, patient safety, and reducing liability.

The author of several books on nursing topics, Patricia Iyer has presented seminars at several nursing conferences including those sponsored by the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants, the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management, the International Council of Nurses, the National Gerontological Nurses Association, and the Texas Tech University School of Nursing.

You can also see a list of Patricia Iyer's upcoming presentations and read testimonials from program participants.

Topic: Leadership

Thinking Outside of the Box: Developing Strong Leadership Skills
Preparing for the future of health care includes developing and fostering growth among the leaders. Who are the leaders and how does one prepare the leader for new roles?
This session will enhance the development of leaders, plan for succession in healthcare delivery and identify strategies for being proactive with conflict management. It has been proven that by empowering the leaders and guiding them towards an "all inclusive approach" will make the team stronger. This session will discuss methods of positively interacting with staff to obtain the best outcome. The nurse leader can be proactive with patient safety by suggesting the teams identify various champions. Approaches for dealing with conflict management will be presented. How conflict is managed may mean the difference between success and failure. Techniques presented will help prepare the nurse leader and staff find a commonality leading to a win-win situation.

Topic: Litigation

After the Injury: What Now?
The immediate focus after a patient has been hurt is on taking care of the patient. But when the excitement has died down, the clinician is left with troubling questions regarding talking to the family, documenting the incident, and modifying the plan of care. As increasingly frail elderly patients fill our hospitals and nursing homes, head injuries remain a high risk event.

This seminar explores the physiological consequences of head injuries, including facial fractures, subdural hematomas, and traumatic brain injuries. The mechanism of injury is defined, and the standard of care for diagnosing and treating a head injury is described. The options for the method of disclosure to the family are explored. Recording details of the event in incident reports and within the medical record is critical. The wording and timing of this documentation is crucial. Options for reporting the incident through phone services, computers, or paper records are explored. Revision of the plan of care to prevent a recurrence is essential, and may be a step overlooked when the focus is on the immediate care of the patient. The fear, panic, and guilt many healthcare providers feel after an incident can result in the temptation to tamper with medical records. Methods of tampering are defined, including adding to an existing record, changing data, destroying a record, rewriting a record, and inserting incorrect information into a record. Methods of tampering are illustrated in this session with Powerpoint slides of altered records. The implications for the defense of a claim are defined, including disciplinary action by professional boards, loss of insurance coverage, the need to settle what might have been a defensible case, and punitive damages.

Legal Aspects of Pain Management
Either overmedication or undermedication can result in patient injury. This clinical program helps nurses understand the principles of pain assessment and the legal issues associated with inadequate pain management. The learner will identify the steps in the legal process and again an understanding of the steps in litigation. The program is loaded with information about dangerous medications, types of medication errors, case studies, and tips of patient safety. All this from the editor of Pain and Suffering.

Nursing Documentation
The editor of Nursing Documentation, a Nursing Process Approach, 4th edition, draws on almost 20 years of experience reviewing medical records for liability. Information on which are the most likely allegations to be brought against nurses are presented. The medical record is the key to a successful defense. The legal aspects of charting, illustrated with actual cases involving nurses, are stressed to assist nurses in reducing their liability risks. The implications of tampering with medical records are presented. This program can be expanded to a half day workshop.

Clinical Topics

Are the Golden Years so Golden: an Aging Simulation
What is it like to lose one’s senses, balanced, and peace of mind? This carefully crafted aging simulation will enable you to experience what it is like to get old. After an overview of the changes associated with aging, you will have a firsthand experience simulating aging. Step into the shoes of an elderly person as you experience changes in vision, hearing, smell, taste, and balance. The session concludes with discussion of feelings experienced during the hands on experience, and how this information can be applied to the care of the older person.

Stemming the Tide of Nursing Home Litigation
This program provides concrete information about why nursing homes are sued, and suggests the highest risk aspects of gerontological nursing practice. The speaker shares data collected for a 12 year period involving almost 600 nursing home law suits. Methods of defending nursing home claims are identified, along with strategies for documentation which support the defense strategies. Three high risk areas are explored in depth: fractures, neglect, and pressure ulcers. The presenter is the editor of Nursing Home Litigation: Investigation and Case Preparation, Lawyers and Judges Publishing Company, 2006, second edition.

Can You Hear Me?
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has defined communication problems as the number one causes of sentinel events. This program explores the ways that nurses can improve communication with patients, staff, and the healthcare team. The role of the nurse as patient advocate and the importance of the chain of command are stressed. Patient safety practices drawn from the medical error reduction movement are presented. Participants will learn how to handle confrontations that have a direct impact on patient safety. The program is appropriate for all levels of nursing practices. This program will include actual medical surgical legal cases in which communication factored into the injury to the patient. The information is presented from the perspective of a medical surgical nursing expert witness.

Orthopaedic Liability: How to Avoid Broken Bones
Fractured hips, fractured skulls with closed head injuries, or fractured vertebrae with paralysis add up to huge damages. Learn what you can to do reduce risk in your facility from fractures. An important goal for healthcare facilities is to be proactive in identifying those individuals who are at risk for falls. This session will offer suggestions of standardization of patient care by utilizing templates which have been approved by facilities. Healthcare providers - RNs, LPNs and UAPs are the ones who are at the bedside caring for the patient 24 hours a day. This session will discuss educating the staff and taking a proactive approach to prevent falls. Additionally, specific injuries will be presented - such as mortality rates of the patient who has suffered a hip fracture. Elevation of mortality rates for this population will be discussed. Further, a discussion will include the percent of patients who are ambulating without devices at the one year mark and the implications of this statistic. A case study of a patient who sustained a hip fracture after a fall will be presented - beginning with the incident report, followed by a case study involving a fall and head injury.

When the Call Bell Rings: The Roots of Patient Injury
This session explores the roots of patient injury- the factors in the healthcare environment and within nursing that contribute to untoward outcomes. Errors and harm can result from the complexity of the system, as well as from nursing performance. Several studies have suggested that appropriate nursing care is associated with improved patient outcomes, affecting both morbidity and mortality. The roots of patient injury include communication, orientation and training, staffing, assessment and care planning, availability of information, competency and credentialing, procedural compliance, environmental safety, leadership, continuum of care, and organizational culture. The session will give an overview of the roots of injury and will further focus on 2 areas: communication and staffing. This presentation may be expanded to a full day workshop.

Testimonals for Patricia Iyer's presentations

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