In Istanbul, Hopkins nurses share their knowledge
By Sarah Achenbach
The months spent distilling Hopkins’ Nurse Managers Academy curriculum into a workshop at Anadolu Saglik Merkezi (ASM), a private hospital in Gebze near Istanbul, was the easy part. Even having every slide translated into Turkish and presenting via an instant interpreter for back-to-back workshops wasn’t that difficult.
The challenge for Karen Davis, MS ’94, RN, and Susan Kulik, MSN ’06, MBA, was adapting their presentation to address issues and questions of the 100 ASM nurses who attended.
“We had to fly by the seat of our pants, but we were able to give them exactly what they wanted,” Davis, director of Medical Nursing, notes. She and Kulik had prepared a basic conflict resolution presentation, but in talking to the ASM nurses on the first day, they learned the group was well-versed in the concepts. “We cut the lecture short and went right to role-playing so that Susan and I could demonstrate strategies to address conflict and they could try out new approaches.”
Both were very impressed with the nurses’ openness, honesty, and professionalism. “They were very eager for training and to understand nursing leadership concepts,” says Kulik, Nelson 8 Nurse Manager. “They also were very accepting of us.” She explains with pride that post-workshops, the ASM nurses developed a clinical tech role for support and now use SBAR (the Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommend communication tool elaborated upon during training) to improve communica-tion between the nursing and physician staffs. Reflects Davis, “At Hopkins, one of our missions is to have a global presence. We have a lot to share, and we learn a lot from other cultures.”