When I visited my sister, a nurse educator, at work, her coworkers’ first question to me was: “Can you teach us Excel?”
I’ve worked at a hospital myself, so this request doesn’t surprise me anymore. What does, however, is how little information is available online about Excel for nurses.
When researching this resource guide, I came across a saying that nurses need to know their “spreadsheets and their bedsheets.”
Because I wince at blood, I’m going to focus on the former.
If you are already subscribed to the newsletter… you can find this download in the learning-paths-and-workshop-outlines subfolder of the resource library.
Take back the workflow
Like other healthcare professionals, nurses can be slave to the computer. Like with other jobs, promoted nurses ironically end up getting to do less of what they love, and more of the number-crunching (and perhaps mind-numbing) spreadsheet administration.
For these nurses, a bit of Excel-savvy can cut down the time needed and errors created in data collection and analysis. A spreadsheet-literate nurse brings a secret weapon to budget meetings, able to wield calculations and forecasts right along with the penny-pinching finance people.
Download the learning guide below 👇
Crunch the nursing numbers
Then there are the non-clinical aspects of nursing. It may surprise many to know that not all nurses are constantly at the bedside: some are trained in research or administration. These nurses even like data, but perhaps their formal training did not prepare them for the realities of dirty data.
Learning guide
My focus for this learning guide is nurses who are overwhelmed with the dirty data that is thrown at them of all kinds: operational, clinical and financial. It is my hope that with this workshop, nurses are able to contribute more of their precious talents to what matters: whether that’s patient care, medical research or any of the countless roles they provide to society.
Consider this learning guide like a blueprint or recipe for holding this workshop at your organization. It’s an outline with exercises, datasets, and so forth which you are welcome to use as you see helpful.
Leave a Reply