Clinical Nursing Services

The Emergency Department
Jamaica Hospital Medical Center's dynamic Emergency Department is a level I Trauma Center and 911 receiving hospital that serves over 100,000 patients annually. The Emergency Department provides for our cardiac patients in a designated Chest Pain Center. Care for our Pediatric patients is provided in a new state-of-the-art Pediatric Emergency Department

Nursing care is provided by expert professional Registered Nurses. Our nursing staff is a vital part of the health care team in the Emergency Department. The nursing shortage across teh country has made it necessary to develop on-going programs to recruit and retain staff particularly in Critical Care areas.

In response to the nursing shortage we developed a program in collaboration with the Staff Development department to provide in-depth training and education in emergency nursing care for new graduates of BSN programs and Med/Surg nurses with less than one year experience.

The first component of the program involved developing existing seasoned Emergency Nurses and training them as Learning Coaches. These nurses would provide clinical guidance when the orientees are on the unit. The learning coach program was a two-day session in the classroom setting. During this time, the coaches reviewed the orientation curriculum and class schedule of the students and were completely familiarized with the program.

The program was designed to follow the Emergency Nurses Association Core Curriculum with lectures by all clinical disciplines to provide the didactic component.

The program ran for three months - six weeks didactic and six weeks in the clinical area with the learning coaches. The new graduates were deployed to the Med/Surg units for one month to gain the much needed experience. They were evaluated after the month and released to the E.D. for clinical training. The nurses with some med/surg experience went directly to the E.D. for their clinical training.

At the end of the three month period, all the candidates were evaluated. Many were released to their assigned shifts. Some of the new graduates required additional training which was provided. They were evaluated on a monthly basis and after six months from the beginning of the program, all the nurses were fully credentialed and released to their shifts.

This program is such a success that it is repeated on a yearly basis. Continued education is an important component of our staff's performance growth. E.D. nursing staff are required to have fifty CEUs annually and are required to maintain all certifications. Many E.D. nurses are certified in Emergency Nursing.