Lifelong Learning Series Part 1

Oscar Wilde once said “You can never be overdressed or over-educated.”

In both nursing and in business, you can never stop learning! Having had over 10 years of bedside experience, I have seen evidence-based practice in medicine constantly evolving. As I learn more about the business world, I see industry trends are also always changing. Healthcare executives and insurance companies started talking about “Center for Medicare (CMS) guideline changes” in 2016 and now in 2023 they are focusing on how value-based care will change their business strategy. Since I am a lifelong learner, I am going to do a blog series on a few things I do and what others can do to stay curious.

Browse your local library website and LinkedIn Learning

I love the atmosphere of libraries. One day during the pandemic I was nostalgic for going to the library. So, I went to my library website and just started clicking around. I noticed they had a tab for digital resources. I was expecting a small list of links, but there were so many free resources on there to learn. I saw LinkedIn Learning is actually free with my library card. Business professionals and students usually pay monthly for the service. I also found a website called Treehouse Academy that I was using to learn Python Coding techniques. They have instructional videos and quizzes on every coding language. The website also taught me about topics like user experience and ChatGPT.

Kanopy and Libby is also free and included with my library card! Kanopy is a free streaming service like Netflix with both award-winning movies and different docu-series such as The Great Courses. Libby is a phone application which has free audiobooks that I listen to while driving or walking around the park.

Join a leadership committee and ask questions that create great conversations

One of the best ways for me to learn is to ask thought-provoking questions to my co-workers on leadership committees. Some questions are pretty straight-forward like “How do you do this?” Those are easy. However, it is those questions that there is no clear answer to that I have learned the most from. When I was a new nurse, I joined a hospital-wide committee that had members from all specialties and roles. I represented the bedside nurses in a medical-surgical unit and I was the minority. I didn’t have much expertise advise a veteran would give, but I was able to give the perspective of how policy changes would impact our workflow. Being a part of this committee, I was able to start thinking outside-the-box of my everyday nursing tasks. One discussion that I vividly remember was about central lines and the impact of using a 3cc syringe versus a 10cc syringe to deliver medications. Professors and preceptors don’t talk about those concepts in orientation or nursing school. It is conversations like these that made me want to critically think through different situations and their impact on patient care and other units of the hospital.

Similarly, being on the Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee for the Georgia Association of Healthcare Executives has sparked a lot of conversations of big ideas I don’t think about every day. One profound thing I learned is that simple changes in an organization can impact a large demographic of people.

Optimize your social media

One thing that has helped me learn without even trying is to follow certain hashtags or educational accounts and like their posts or save them in collections. Some accounts that have helped me to learn are: @theivguy, @natgeo, @nasa, @acheconnect, and @exceptionalnurses. I noticed as I liked the posts, I would get even more content on my feed that is related to nursing, nature, space, and healthcare leadership. These posts would be from accounts I don’t follow. The algorithms helped me find people like @nicolekupchik. I even got the chance to meet her at the AACN NTI conference in Philadelphia this year! These posts have been really helpful in integrating learning in my everyday habits and inspiring me to continue my learning journey.