The New England Nursing Informatics Consortium (NENIC) has a long history of offering high-quality continuing education (CE) to membership across New England. Over the last 5 years, the evolution of technology has made remote offerings a reality. Tele-conferencing and video-conferencing solutions have become more affordable over the past 5 years, making these offerings financially viable. In addition, committee meetings and programs were offered virtually, making meetings more convenient and accessible to membership. Beginning in 2015, NENIC began to offer Spring and Fall CE meetings remotely and has never looked back.
In 2019, NENIC and the editorial leadership of CIN: Computers Informatics Nursing (CIN) discussed a partnership to offer a virtual journal club to our members. This journal club would provide CE for participation. The NENIC and CIN leadership engaged in discussions to determine how this vision would become a reality. The NENIC leadership was looking for ways to increase its (CE) offerings and this appeared to be one step forward toward achieving that goal. A benefit to CIN would be increased exposure, of their journal, to an engaged informatics audience. Many NENIC members have American Nurses Credentialing Center certification in Nursing Informatics and actively seek additional CE opportunities in support of this certification. When we were approached by the CIN editorial staff with this exciting offer, we welcomed the opportunity.
A quick literature review provided ideas and structure about how to select topics areas, facilitate discussions, and operationalize journal club meetings. Aiello-Laws et al1-4 was the most helpful. This publication represented a "how-to" guide for setting up a journal club. It offered directives for roles and responsibilities as well as forms and strategies for overcoming barriers to acceptance. There were no concerns about engaging membership or significant barriers within the NENIC community because of the membership's interest in CE. Yet the material was helpful to review as the program was getting started. One of the most important recommendations was to create a structured question guide to prompt discussion prior to meetings. Kleinpell2 was also helpful as she emphasized the importance of having a clear purpose and outlined the basic steps for success. We also followed Tremblay et al's3 framework and modified it for our organization. Other CE programs are offered annually by NENIC, but our target was to reach an annually offering of 15 CE when all programs were considered collectively. This goal was shaped by American Nurses Credentialing Center certification guidelines and requirements. This goal has been achieved by NENIC with the implementation of this program.
To move the initiative forward, a task force was convened to develop a professional development strategy for the journal club consistent with NENIC's mission. The group reflected on the following question: "How could we operationalize NENIC's mission to develop and focus on Nurses Improving Healthcare Delivery Through Informatics within a journal club?" In short order, a strategy was developed to offer three to four virtual journal club meetings a year that would focus on one of the following key areas: (1) strategic/digital care processes (ie, the electronic health record and its components); (2) business drivers; (3) technology drivers; and (4) executive skill development. This would be accomplished with the available CE offerings from CIN.
The next step was to align the technical foundation to deliver and facilitate the journal club. There were three basic components required: (1) a promotion, registration, and participant tracking component; (2) a video platform; and (3) access to the CE activity. All were critical in our strategy. We used our membership management platform (ie, Web site, etc) to promote the journal club, alert members of offerings, and register participants. In this way, we were able to offer the article only to those who registered, and we could verify attendance and subsequently distribute access to the CE activity (ie, Wolters Kluwer's CE connection). The ability to verify attendance was an important requirement for our CE process and limiting distribution of the article and CE was of equal importance. This reflected our agreement with CIN and Wolters Kluwer.
The video platform was also critical to enable meeting "in person," and for this, we used Zoom. The video platform allowed us to meet virtually and review and discuss each journal article.
To date, we have been able to offer nine virtual journal club meetings. We have covered a range of topics, including, dashboards, data analytics, robotics, defining workflows in efforts to reduce the burden of documentation, social media, and researching efficiencies in outpatient surgery centers.
We look forward to working with CIN and their editorial leadership to achieve our mission of remote CE and developing nurse informaticians as we strive for excellence and continue to transform patient care delivery through informatics.
The NENIC (https://www.nenic.org) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The organization was formed in 2007 and built on the legacy of the Boston Area Nursing Informatics Consortium and the Nursing Information Systems Council of New England. Its mission is to support professional development and networking and CE and provide a conduit for resource and information exchange.
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