July 15, 2014

Need Stimulates Creativity

As nurses, who are in the role of caregiver instructors, we delight in the fact that there are people ‘out there’ who need and want to know some of the information that we have spent a lifetime gathering. Additionally, we (instructors) will do everything short of ‘standing on our heads’ to impart important pieces of caregiver information to our paraprofessional and family caregiver students.  The instructor’s need to share evidence-based information intersects with the student’s desire to know and understand; it is at this intersection that creativity can meet the needs of both parties.

As an example, our training program needed edentulous mouths for mouth care practice because there were students who could not make the leap from tooth brushing practice to edentulous mouth care simulation practice – some of the students could not pretend that the teeth were not present. We were not able to locate a vendor that sold an edentulous practice device. Not wanting the student’s training experience to suffer, two of the instructors collaborated to create an edentulous mouth that included a tongue, gums, lips, and cheeks (pictured below). Now we have six edentulous mouths for mouth care simulation practice during our In Home Assistant/ Personal Care Assistant course.

Creative collaboration by Bobbie and Pat, Schmieding Home Caregiver Instructors