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Being followed around by camera crews isn't something nurses are told to expect from the job. But that was the case recently for some nurses at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children (AIDHC) in Wilmington, DE, and is a common activity there.
"It was like being a rock star for a day," Shannan Sartin, BSN, RN, CPN, said of being in front of the lights and cameras as she simulated placing gastrostomy tubes (G-tubes) and nasogastric tubes (NG-tubes) for a series of patient education video programs.
Participating in the video production was a fun break from the intensity of daily nursing, but the videos are a serious project. 
The Networks
Teaming up to create programs to help nurses teach parents how to care for their children at home are GetWellNetwork, a provider of interactive patient care education, and AIDHC's KidsHealth.org, the most-visited site on the Web - according to www.hitwise.com - for information about health, behavior and development from before birth through the teen years.
KidsHealth is part of the Nemours Foundation, which runs AIDHC and clinics in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.
Providing doctor-reviewed, easy-to-understand articles, videos and tools, KidsHealth also licenses its content in English and Spanish to children's hospitals and other organizations. It shares material with Bethesda, MD-based GetWellNetwork, which provides education, entertainment and communication technologies to hospital bedside TV monitors.
Seizing the Moment
An example of that material captured on film, which includes a script with heavy nursing input, involved the placement of a G-tube.
"A mock patient came in with her father, and we filmed segments of what the patient would go through - from admission, to getting a new G-tube placed and then using the tube, teaching the dad with the nursing staff and the patient herself, and then discharge," said Sartin, an assistant nurse manager at AIDHC.
The videos - covering topics including cancer, asthma, diabetes and tracheotomy care - are designed to be viewed by parents and patients at bedside, when and where they need it most. Each topic includes an average of five 5-minute video segments. To test comprehension, each video is followed by a three-question on-screen quiz.
The videos provide "a consistent, simple explanation of very complex concepts to patients and families when they're newly diagnosed and having a hard time integrating all the information we're giving them," said Dyane Bunnell, MSN, RN, pediatric hematology/oncology nurse clinician at AIDHC.
The videos about cancer, for example, show "yes, it can be difficult, but here're some stories from patients who have survived," said Bunnell, who reviewed scripts and video graphics for the cancer series, and recommended former AIDHC patients to appear on camera. "Although we're great in pediatrics at including the patient, there are times when school-age children and adolescents need to learn this information when it's personally directed at them. Some of this content is directed right at them, not at their parents."
Bunnell, a nurse for 27 years, said parents can get inundated with misinformation on the Internet. "I think it's so important to be able to provide them something that's been reviewed by experts in the field and is valid and good information," she said. "This information is provided in digestible pieces."
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