Diane Ehrig, RN MSN MBA

 Diane Ehrig is a passionate Nurse Educator with nine years of adult acute care nursing experience. Diane seeks to inspire others to academic and clinical excellence and help achieve optimal patient outcomes. She still enjoys bedside nursing, especially working in Neurological Intensive Care.

 Diane has 3 adult children and 5 grandchildren. She is active in her church, particularly in the choir and Health & Wellness Ministries. Diane can often be found promoting Hands Only © CPR at various events in her community and elsewhere.

My “Why”: I’ve been a nurse working night shift who needed to take Annual Competencies and other required coursework. These were not available during my normal work hours. I had to abruptly adjust my sleep pattern to attend these courses. The Problem: Almost no classes available during my “normal” work/waking hours resulting in short- term sleep deprivation and several other non- tangible challenges My Project: A simple solution: Offer some required courses at night!

 I had a general idea of the topic I wanted to study prior to beginning the graduate program. However, the design, focus, setting, instruments, etc. were influenced and shaped along the path of my Master’s journey.  During my Educational Core, I had an assignment to develop, program, and test a Simulated Interactive Mannequin (SIMS) to guide the learning objectives with Surviving Sepsis. I used lessons from that assignment to deliver instruction for the Surviving Sepsis class.

 Research Questions 1. How will offering employer-required courses during one’s normal work hours affect job satisfaction? 2. What classes could be offered at night?

The researcher worked night shift for the first two years of her career. Her employer required Annual Competencies to be completed, which were not available at night. The author had to adjust her sleeping patterns to attend these classes. She experienced additional sleep deprivation and other negative health effects as a result of this factor. Her day shift co-workers never had this issue.

 The relatively small sample size of 26 limits the generalizability of the findings.  Attempting to complete this study within the semester term of six months was a limitation.  Lack of financial resources to devote full-time attention to the Capstone process  Not being affiliated with a teaching hospital or networking with other graduate students was also an intangible limitation

 The critical action cross-sectional study was chosen because of the intent of the researcher: make a difference in the lives of a significant portion of the nursing workforce. This study met all the components of the Critical Action Cross-Sectional design.

 The author conducted an Information Session wherein elements of Informed Consent were discussed. Nurses who voluntarily chose to participate were asked to sign an Informed Consent form. Participation could be withdrawn at any time. The author also completed the NIH Protection of Human Subjects coursework. No information about the participants or facility/ies will be released at any time.

 Offering coursework at night made a statistically significant improvement in job satisfaction among the night shift nurses.  The author could not locate any coursework that would be inappropriate for night time presentation.  Literature support: Some of the sources cited did deliver required BLS coursework at night and experienced higher job satisfaction.

 Employers need to consider scheduling an Educator during the evening shift of  Encourage night staff to stay on that shift by using nurse-led suggestions  Plans to disseminate findings: As part of the agreement to use the membership of Allnurses.com, this study will be published there. The author also plans to submit it for publication in nursing journals.

 Instructional Design domain: Adult Learning Theories and Bloom’s Taxonomy guided much of the curricula used by the author  The author is an American Heart Association BLS Instructor. AHA uses evidence-based science in its instructional design and has over 50 years of success in teaching Emergency Cardiovascular Care.  Surviving Sepsis also uses evidence-based science in its approach. It promotes using “bundles” of treatments, tests, and monitoring of the patient with sepsis.

 Research fundamentals design: The textbook by Gay, Mills, & Airasian provided guidance for the research design. By using this text, the author was able to decide on a critical action cross-sectional design

1. Schedule Nurse Educators on the evening shift 2. Hire an Independent Contractor to present education during night shift 3. Seek grant funding to support nursing education 4. Publish findings in peer-reviewed nursing journals 5. Perform a longitudinal study

 I learned how to conduct graduate-level research  Best Practices were reinforced in my own clinical practice  People usually have good intentions, but are not always able to follow through to completion

 The most challenging aspect of my research was obtaining the facility approval. I submitted my proposal with all the attachments to three different Chief Nursing Officers. It was very disappointing, and at times frustrating, to not obtain the results I expected based on what someone else said.  I got to meet and talk to a lot of very smart, dedicated, and passionate nurses.

 If I had enough money, I could have concentrated on completing my Capstone instead of needing to work during that time  Performing the research for this study inspires me to stay current on evidence-based practice  I obtained the most current evidence on the Surviving Sepsis protocols and updated the practice at one large acute care facility  I learned that I have a lot of very supportive colleagues and friends. I learned that I can successfully complete a lengthy & comprehensive project like the Capstone

 Standard statistical measurement and evaluation tools were utilized in this study.  Survey results were automatically imported into an Excel © spreadsheet, which minimized author bias and mathematical errors.  Data were analyzed using both single-subject and repeated-measures ANOVA. The benefit of ANOVA is researchers can test within-group and between- group variance.