Parent / Child - Charity - Delgado Community College

The PCN faculty are looking forward welcoming you to Parent-Child Nursing [PCN]! You will change your focus from Adult Medical-Surgical Nursing to working with infants, children, and pregnant women. We know it will be interesting and you will be amazed at the amount of information you learn and the skills you acquire and refine. The purpose of this letter is to provide you with information you will need before starting the course.

I. COURSE PREREQUISISTES:

a. CPR (Health Care Provider) / STUDENT NURSE LIABILITY INSURANCE must be currernt and valid through the end of your semester in the course.

b. TB Skin Results: Negative tuberculosis results documented with a negative skin test within the past year or chest xray. The health nurse must have a copy of the report.

c. HEALTH INSURANCE You must provide documentation of health insurance coverage during the 1st week of the semester. Your clinical instructor will view your documentation and you will sign a form which verifies your intent to comply with the requirement that you maintain health coverage while you are a PCN student.

d. MATH COMPETENCY: You must pass the PCN math competency exam with a grade of 90% to give medications, participate in clinical, and continue in the course. There are multiple choice and calculation questions. Practice problems on Blackboard and class time can help with review of previous content from Pharmacology and nursing courses in preparation for this exam.

Each of these prerequisites is required prior to clinical experiences which begin the second week of PCN. You WILL NOT be able to start PCN clinicals without documentation of each of these items. NOTE: Clinicals are a required component of the nursing course and students who miss more than 10% of required clinicals can not successfully complete the course.

II. PREVIOUS KNOWLEDGE: Information covered in previous courses will be applied in this course with parent-child patients, especially Anatomy & Physiology, Basics, and NAC 1. Prior to the start of PCN, we recommend that you review: A & P of the Female reproductive and neuro systems; Fetal circulation; Care Mapping, and the Charting Module from Basics.

III. SKILLS: The skills you may need to review are:

1. Drug calculations
2. Breaking a glass vial
3. Injections (all routes)
4. Putting on sterile gloves/sterile technique/sterile dressings
5. IV Therapy: Steps for converting IV to Heparin/Saline lock, steps for giving IVPB meds through Heparin lock, IV pump use, IV site care, calculation of IV rate when not using IV pump, and reconstitution of medications.
6. How to read different syringes, e.g. Insulin, 1 cc, 3 cc, 5 cc, 10 cc, & 12 cc noting differences in calibrations.

We do not reteach skills that you have learned in the past two semesters. If you have not had much experience, especially with the listed skills we suggest that you practice before the start of PCN. The computer lab is open during the break 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday and there are a number of programs that may help you. You may also practice in the Skills Lab 539. Students must bring hemostats to practice with recycled IV fluids. PCN skills will be demon-strated before you go to clinical in the skills lab building on previous skills. It is imperative that you practice these new skills in the Lab. You will be checked off in clinical.

IV. CLASS ATTENDANCE: Attendance at Delgado Community College classes is mandatory. We believe all PCN lectures are vitally important, and missing one might have a negative effect on learning and test performance. Punctuality and courtesy is expected when attending class.

If you were not able to register for the section you want there are two ways you may be able to change. You maybe able to switch with another student [1-to-1] or you can submit a dated, written email request with the nature of your problem, potential solution(s), name, address, and contact information to the coordinator. A deadline for changes will be announced at the first class and the final clinical schedule will be posted before the first meeting of the clinical groups. For confidentiality reasons the clinical rotations are not posted on Blackboard but a tentative rotation list will be posted on the 4th floor PCN bulletin board.

V. RESOURCES:

All course materials will be posted on the course blackboard site [PCN Master Fall 2007 Odd. This is opened before the first class and students may self enroll -- there is no password. This is the site for the first 8 week course students and all others will be deleted the first week of class.
The tentative course calendar will be posted on Blackboard.
Classes are scheduled every Monday and Tuesday from 8a to 12:30p [or 1 pm].
The first week of the course plan to spend 6-8 hours/day at school. The faculty spend time between courses to plan the next course based on experiences and student input so activities and schedule are all TENTATIVE.
It is recommended that students print course requirements and the Assessment Lectures for the first week from the Blackboard site
The required text for PCN will be London, M.L., et.al. (2007). Maternal Child Nursing [2nd Ed]. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. This is available at the Delgado Bookstore [Barnes & Noble], Chimes, and on-line through PrenHall.com.
If you want to prepare for the first lectures these are:
Maternal Assessment...Chps. 9, 10, 11, 12
Birth.... Chps. 17, 18, 19
Newborn Assessment....Chps. 27, 28, 29
Growth & Development...Chps. 33
Pediatric Assessment...Chps. 35

Maternal Assessment -- Chps 9, 10, 11, 12 Have a nice break. We look forward to seeing each of you at your PCN course!
Nora F. Steele
Nora F. Steele, DNS, RN,C., PNP on behalf of the PCN faculty
nsteel@dcc.edu CSN Room 427

5/07 nfs