Biweekly report 4

Internship – Bi-weekly Report # 4 Name: Brenna Coles

Date Submitted: March 8, 2013

E-mail Address: Brenna.Coles@dalc.ca

Cell/Home Phone: 506-233-7532 506-857-9986

Bi-weekly Reporting Period: From: Feb. 25, 2013 Note:

To: March 7, 2013

Please complete the following three parts of the Bi-weekly Report and submit via Online Blackboard Learn (BbL) by midnight Sunday immediately following the two-week period.

Submissions to BbL are time-stamped.

Part 1. Bi-weekly Time (%) Report Based upon your journal entries and time log, indicate below an approximate distribution of your work time over the reporting period. Try to estimate the percentage of time spent on suggested categories.

Administrative/Clerical Meetings Research/Study Presentations Journals/Reports Other _____________

_12_% 10__% 55__% ____% _3__% ____%

Observation ____% Planning/Preparation _20_% Problem Solving ____% Attend conference/workshops ___% Interventions ____% Evaluation of Programs ____%

Part 2. Actual Time Log Week

Dates

Week

Feb

8am- 8am- 8am- 8am- 8am- 40

7

25-

4pm

March 1

Mon

Tues

4pm

Wed

4pm

Thur

4pm

Fri

4pm

Total Hours

Job Competencies Used During the Week

Competency B: Distinguishes between behaviors that foster and those that hinder wellbeing.

Competency C: Infers need for Health Education/Promotion on the basis of obtained data.

Competency A: Recruits community organizations, resource people and potential participants for support and assistance in program planning.

Competency A: Develops a

Week 8

March

8am- 8am- 8am- 8am- 8am- 40

4-

4pm

March 8

Part 3.

4pm

4pm

4pm

4pm

plan for coordinating Health Education/Promotion services.

Competency A: Utilizes computerized health information retrieval system effectively.

Competency B: Distinguishes between behaviors that foster and those that hinder wellbeing.

Competency C: Infers need for Health Education/Promotion on the basis of obtained data.

Competency A: Recruits community organizations, resource people and potential participants for support and assistance in program planning.

Competency A: Develops a plan for coordinating Health Education/Promotion services.

Competency B: Facilitates cooperation between and among levels of program personnel.

Competency A: Utilizes computerized health information retrieval system effectively.

Competency B: Establishes effective consultative relationships with those requesting assistance in solving health-related problems.

Personal analysis of your professional development

At the beginning of this reporting period I made an important call to Dr. Tim Christie. He was able to give me some wonderful feedback on the development of the employee health survey. He is the director of Ethics Services for the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation in Saint John NB. After careful review of the draft survey he was able to assure me that there are no current ethical issues. He also urged me to get the board of ethics to approve this before implementation so that if by any chance in the future we wish to publish the data we are able to.

However, after speaking to Dr. Christie, I realized an issue with the readiness to change component regarding the mental fitness pillar. The mental fitness is unlike the other components in that you cannot easily apply the Transtheoretical model like you can with the other three pillars. So I consulted with Chantal, who is the Regional Addiction Coordinator. She offered good advice as she was able to send me some valuable links to resources. I find it challenging to find good survey questions to ask new employees as the ones I often come across are for those who are already working within the organization. I also ran the survey questions by Chantal which asked about mental health and drinking. I want to be careful not to cross the line with union and ethics and cause conflict. Some of the questions we included in earlier drafts were removed because we were asking about drug use. It is unfortunate that we are running into red tape and we are unable to ask these sorts of questions. I am sure Chantal will not like the decision we made on removing the drug use questions from our survey because in an email she did mention that we were missing a section on narcotics- which is the second leading addition next to alcoholism.

The next major step I took in the development of my special service project was the first consultation with Patsy and Linda, the two Employee Health Nurses on site. It was almost like to break the ice and make changes to the physical health profile before showing it to the rest of the Employee Health Nurses. There was some cause for concern when one of the nurses discussed her thoughts on human rights issues. I strongly believe that if there were questions of human rights issues that Dr. Christie would have mentioned this in our earlier discussions. However, this was not the case. However, we have come up with alternatives to deal with such issues, such as making the health profile voluntary and changing the setting to a health fair rather than a human resources practice.

Another option is not to have employee’s sign their name or include any identifying information but rather include their facility/zone. This would still allow us to collect the important data which we are looking to gather. The reports generated from the analyzed data will still tell us specific health issues in each zone. A big step was sending out the Physical Health Profile to all of the Employee Health Nurses and giving them a timeline to get back to me with their individual comments. I was forewarned that I will have perhaps three Employee Health Nurses (all from one zone) who will be very critical of the new process. Some people do not like change, but I just hope they don’t stall my special service project The database that must be created to hold all of the data collected from the Employee Health Profile and the Physical Health Profile must be created by a professional. Marilyn has a connection with a man named Scott. He was responsible for creating the database for the immunizations. We plan on adding the Employee Physical Health Profile directly into the immunization database. The other employee health profile which the actual employee will fill out will be in a database on its own. At the present time we are still unsure if Scott will be able to fit this project in. This makes me nervous because if it is not completed then my special service project cannot be implemented.

Another important element to the Physical Health Profile was to figure out a way to some how include laboratory without needing a physician for the laboratory requisitions. Therefore we are moving ahead with the idea of using cholesterol testing kits and glucometer. I prepared a brief literature review on the Cholesterol testing kits as they are quite new to use by health care facilities. Lots of questions still exist such as how

to get the machine, how much will the accessories cost per test, and accuracy. I have a Purchasing Agent for the Moncton zone helping me find this information.

Overall, I am feeling that progress is being made. I am hopeful that my special service project will be complete however, I am not sure if it will end up like I expect it to.

The path I took to get to the end result has been challenging mostly because I dislike working on the same thing for this long. I would love to be completed this internship. I feel like I get more out of taking my regular courses than working 40 hours per week in this work environment. I had high expectations for my internship and it’s not what I would have expected. I have discussed this with another classmate also completing a Health Promotion internship this semester and also agrees. Perhaps a throughout evaluation of the internship component to the health promotion degree should be looked at.