mjones9@hsc.mb.ca

all messages by user

8/12/2021 Topic: E-Mail Lesson (Pen Pals) Meaghan Jones	Kimberly Shangraw wrote: Hi there, I may want to try that with you. I'm in Alaska at Mat-Su Regional Hospital and will have 8 interns. We do a daily journal and I think this might be a nice weekly or monthly activity. What were you thinking for regularity and your student's abilities. Great idea. Kim Kim: This is off topic... LOL. I have typically held verbal reflections with interns, but want to shift to more journaling and self reflection for this next group. What format do you find works well for your interns, especially ones who have low literacy? Do you provide guiding prompts? I find often interns just regurgitate the same sharing day after day and so the led conversations have allowed for more nuanced shares.
8/12/2021 Topic: New Curriculum 2021 - general, not unit specific Meaghan Jones	Hello, It is recommended in the new curriculum to have interns develop a glossary of terms throughout the year. While we cover terminology throughout the year, I have never had interns create a single glossary of all terms before and I like the idea. I haven't seen a template as of yet (still working through it all) and so I am wondering if anyone has something they feel works well for varying levels of literacy? I am trying to determine what to use: computer versus paper. Thanks in advance, Meaghan
9/3/2021 Topic: Women's & Children's Hospital Internships Meaghan Jones	Hello, I have a meeting with the new Directors for the Women's and Children's hospitals attached to our hospital campus. We have only ever had one intern in a loosely connected internship at Children's in our 5 years here. With the fourth wave of Covid about to hit our province, Children's Hospital recognizes that they will likely be busier providing intensive care than in the 1st to 3rd waves. The new Director there is very open to chatting about how our interns can add value at a challenging time, and Women's has hopped on board and offered to meet as well. So: name your top/best internships in Women's and Children's hospitals. What are the tasks that an intern can do there or clinics that exist that I might be less familiar with having mainly worked in the General Hospital? Our host has largely had interns working in outpatient and non-clinical/clinical support areas, so inpatient areas remain newer to me. I am hoping to have suggestions I can bring forward during our virtual Teams meeting. If you'd be willing to share a sample schedule/checklist of duties for a killer bee internship, I'd love to see them! mjones9@hsc.mb.ca Many thanks! Meaghan
11/15/2021 Topic: Voc Fit Conversations with Families Meaghan Jones	I am looking for advice from programs who use Voc Fit regularly and especially ones who find rating reports with family/previous teachers that show a fair bit of divergence from the program assessments. We are trying to use Voc Fit most purposefully this year. A few things we have decided: - To rate skill level as LOW until we see a demonstration of performance that says something different. This allows for an overall picture of growth and not one that would accidentally show a decline. This is a very purposeful choice. - To ask families and prior teachers to complete an assessment. This has been to get a feel for the conversations we might be headed into when we begin to share performance feedback at meetings. It proves helpful to see what families are thinking, especially. What we have found is that in general we are scoring skills lower than families and prior teachers. Where it is a skill we haven't see yet, that makes sense since we are scoring it as LOW. When we are looking for a demonstration of competence with a person for whom that takes longer, that makes sense. We have higher expectations and less 1:1 support than most of our interns got in school in their work experiences, so again we can see how some divergence makes sense. My concern is when I have 50% or less rater agreement in competency areas, and when that is the dominant picture. I'm even seeing 0% agreement in some areas. My questions: - How do you handle this kind of information at planning meetings? - How much information do you make accessible to families? - Are we being too rigid in our assessments?--if an intern can lift 40 lbs but is not doing so in a way that is consistently safe despite training, I currently do not mark them HIGH, since they still need support to prevent injury when lifting. I feel it is unethical to suggest a person has a high level of skill to do physical work if they are likely to do it in a way that incurs injury. Is this in line with how others are assessing interns? Many thanks in advance for any advice and guidance you can provide! Meaghan Jones (Hospital site; Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada)
11/16/2021 Topic: Staggering the 1st internship Meaghan Jones	Hi Lisa, It has always taken us several weeks to stagger them out. If you have several areas with strong natural supports where the workplace takes on training, you can shave a little time off. But in Winnipeg we often try to give our interns 2-3 days of 1:1 support to ensure they have their start up and end of day routines in place, and enough tasks that can be completed independently with accuracy to keep them busy while we shift on to other students. This year we had some do half days to begin so they rolled out a little faster, but it really depended on the placement to make it work. One of the interns was quite thrown when we shifted to whole days, so I don't know if we will do that again or not.
11/16/2021 Topic: Dealing with Death in a Hospital Setting Meaghan Jones	Does your hospital have a Spiritual Health department that works with staff around these issues? Many hospitals do have staff specifically trained to help both staff and patient families, and they can be called upon to give some guidance. Meaghan Erin Fogarty wrote: Hi Everyone, I was just wondering if any other hospital programs have any lessons or helpful resources that they use with their interns to teach them about dealing with death in a hospital setting. While our interns don't have many patient facing tasks, we do have interns on all patient floors of the hospital and they may occasionally pass by a room on their route/work area where someone is having a medical emergency or has passed. Any resources would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
11/29/2021 Topic: Voc Fit Conversations with Families Meaghan Jones	Thanks, Dennis. This is helpful and I appreciate your language clarifications. I really like the Rater Agreement report for exactly the reason you state below; I think it opens up very important conversations. Planning Meetings can be very emotionally charged experiences for families, and I'm always reflecting on how I frame things. I will borrow "communication tool" and reinforce that it's not a standardized assessment -- I think those are beneficial pieces to emphasize.
11/29/2021 Topic: Staying on task with Williams Syndrome Meaghan Jones	What is he focusing on instead of work? If it's interactions with people, that may lead you to a solution. If I have an intern who is distracted by interacting with others, I make interactions with others a primary task in the internship (reception; tray delivery, etc). That worked for one intern with Williams Syndrome. I had another, though, who was not on task and that was because his social anxiety had him avoiding interactions. We had to take a totally different approach to helping him in his internship. Robin Watters wrote: I was wondering if anyone else has experience supporting interns with Williams Syndrome we are finding it a challenge to keep him on task. He shows typical William Syndrome behaviors.
2/9/2022 Topic: Marketing/Information Sharing within Host Business Meaghan Jones	Hello, We are located in a large facility and there has been a tremendous amount of turnover and new hires the past five years we have been here. I would like to get a presentation about Project SEARCH added into the staff onboarding modules, and I am wondering if any other programs have something that the host site already uses? If so, would you be willing/able to share so I could have something to work off of? Thanks in advance, Meaghan
10/28/2022 Topic: Consequences for Negative Behaviors Meaghan Jones	Hey! I'd love to see what is in the Google Doc but can't access it currently. We have an intern who is very task avoidant and who is also taking longer breaks. We always make sure there isn't some other challenge in learning/memory etc before assuming there's a choice being made. At this point I think we are seeing some choices and learned behaviors we need to address. I'm always keen to see what's working for others! For some of our interns who are rewards-motivated we have developed challenge 'games' with them. It takes some time to develop the system or game, but the buy in has been quite good over the years when we make the goals more tangible (we create challenge cards) and tie them to rewards they care about. This year we have an intern who seeks out social time over work, and we have been successfully redirecting him with the challenge cards; he is working towards earning a coffee hang with his skills trainer on a Friday afternoon. It's not something that works for all of our interns, but for our interns on the autism spectrum we have had considerable success. julie.grieshop@mercercountyesc.org wrote: We have implemented this: Let me know if you can't view it https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LqLPr1jAsHUFDec20if8qwB9DJl6jHk_fDPPHGygH38/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fAaB2VAIWVTh8GlIISqeYVjRWieAtMKaDWSm3u1ar3Y/edit
12/12/2022 Topic: internship question - sterilization Meaghan Jones	Hey there, I am hoping for some departmental profiles and task analyses from other programs to address concerns raised by our medical device reprocessing department (what we the department that does sterilization, case carts, etc). The department has been a great partner over the years, but they are struggling to see how to grow the internships in the direction we are looking to grow them. Interns in this placement have been assisting with offloading large and small tunnel washers, restocking supplies, building sterile towel bundles, and sealing surgical items. We are trying to get more ward delivery tasks as well as work on the sterilization end of things. At first blush, that work does not appear all that different from what we see with the tunnel washers, though the staff there have been incredibly resistant to really showing us. We know there are some work culture dynamics at play, so Skills Trainers have been very careful not to push too hard with certain players. It looks like we may be able to finally get more ward delivery work this year but we continue to get pushback regarding the sterilizing equipment work, so I feel like I need specific examples to showcase - a sort of where (site) and what (task analysis), maybe even with images to back up that this is really happening. The management team are in support,; it is the staff have shut down the opportunity. Our site is a tertiary centre; has 8000 staff; 800 beds (always stretched to capacity). Hoping for some examples of similar work in a similar setting. Many thanks, Meaghan (HSC Winnipeg)
1/5/2023 Topic: Intern Injury Restriction Meaghan Jones	Hi Erin, We just had an intern who required surgery and had 6 weeks of restricted work, which then had to be restricted even further due to complications. We found it somewhat challenging to find enough work that fit her skills and interests mid-internship. If we didn't have someone in medical records already, we might have gone there. In our hospital there are a ton of patient forms that need to be sorted to Terminal Digit, bundled and date stamped. There are some computer look ups that can be layered in. Not sure if your facility has similar work or not. For the young women in question, she ended up going to our Women's hospital and working in the area for new moms. She folded linens, sorted donations (actually developed a new system of organization and worked with hospital staff to secure new furniture for it!) , and created various patient packages and take home kits for the new moms, then stocked all four clean rooms where they 'live'. Most of this work could be done from a seated position and pace/productivity was not a priority. Those may not be issues in your situation, but they were for her. Best of luck to you! Hope you find something they are happy with. Meaghan Erin Fogarty wrote: Hi Everyone, Just wanted to gather some ideas of how to deal with an intern that is on Injury restriction. I have an intern currently who will have to be in a cast and splint causing them to be unable to participate in at least the first half of rotation #2 due to not being able to work with restrictions. I have had interns in the past who for a week or two couldn't be on a job site for one reason or another and we were able to make things work, but 6 weeks off of a rotation is a lot of time. I am reaching out to departments to see if there is any clerical work any of our departments may need, but I figured I would ask if anyone else has had a similar situation and how they handled it. Thanks!
5/3/2023 Topic: Correspondence to selected interns Meaghan Jones	Hi Andrea, Winnipeg is coordinated differently, but we use letter head with all of our partners that is unique to Project SEARCH Winnipeg. Meaghan
5/3/2023 Topic: Intern Employment Status Data Entry Meaghan Jones	We run our data entry as Holly has stated, but I often follow up with grads who have maybe fallen off of other people's radars. I sometimes can reach them even if they have moved and or graduated out of follow along support - which some of our grads do. Meaghan Project SEARCH HSC Winnipeg
6/2/2023 Topic: Marketing/Information Sharing within Host Business Meaghan Jones	I totally forgot to say thank you! This was really helpful
9/21/2023 Topic: Appearance- hair Meaghan Jones	We have talked to students about dress code using a social thinking model and relating it to host business policy. If it is not a policy to have natural hair colour, I don't feel I can ask an intern to change their hair. As Forrest mentioned above, we let the workplace standards set the tone. What I can do is talk about how our choices impact how others think and feel about us. Some people may respond negatively to purple hair even if it is within policy, and I try to make sure interns are aware of those possibilities. When it is interview time at end of year we review the conversation again. I've had interns opt for natural hair at that point since they don't want interviewers to make assumptions based on appearance.
11/10/2023 Topic: Conflict Resolution Case Scenarios Meaghan Jones	In case anyone is interested in easy to use worksheets to reinforce Conflict Resolution lessons, there are great ones: https://15worksheets.com/worksheet-category/conflict-resolution/ This website will lead you to a lot of simple worksheets that tackle a lot of our curriculum and even hard skills interns may be learning. I hadn't ever seen it before, and have found it useful this year.
12/7/2023 Topic: Sexuality & Healthy Relationships Curriculum Meaghan Jones	Hello, Just wanted to share a wonderful source for short videos with self-advocates about sexual health topics from British Columbia in Canada. I used a couple of videos in Lesson 4 of Health Relationships curriculum (public vs private) for students who needed slightly different information/conversation. We talked about access to private space for private activities and we are building towards using assertive communication to ask for what they need in their lives. Here's the low down: Online Source: Real Talk https://www.real-talk.org/about/ What is it? An affirmation that all people have a sexualityAdults with cognitive disabilities are experiencing their own sexuality, but may not be getting information or acknowledgement about this experience. Every human being – whether sexually active or not – has a sexuality. It’s part of being human. Sexuality can bring connection, isolation, joy, trauma, pleasure, guilt, excitement… often it’s a combination of things. A conversation about dating, love, relationships and sexOpen communication about sex and relationships improves interpersonal skills, increases the chances of positive romantic relationships for those who want them, and reduces the risk of STIs and sexual abuse. A celebration of the sexuality of adults with cognitive disabilitiesOften the subject of sexuality arises for adults with cognitive disabilities because a problem occurs – perhaps someone is acting in ways that bother people, or perhaps abuse has happened. Who runs it? “A sexual health initiative aimed at people living with cognitive disabilities. Our operational funding is provided by a federal grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada. We’re operated by Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion, posAbilities, and Kinsight. Our leadership team is comprised of Certified Sexual Health Educators with extensive experience in the community living sector.” Topics covered in short, videos: Consent Dating Love and intimacy Pleasure Rights Risk Safer Sex Sexual Identify Surviving and thriving Supporters
12/8/2023 Topic: Hospital Foundation Internships? Meaghan Jones	Hello, I am wondering if anyone has placements with their foundation? I am looking for a list of key tasks that we can bring forward to open up a conversation. Thanks! Meaghan
12/20/2023 Topic: Attendance Meaghan Jones	Hello everyone, I am not sure if people are maybe aware of this already or not, but we will be trialing a new way to track punctuality this year using QR codes, Google Sheets and Google Forms. PROS: - It's free and if you are able to and are currently using the Google Suite, it is a nice complement to what is already being used - QR codes can be intern specific and posted in the work area so that interns cannot 'clock in' until they are physically at their worksite where they begin their tasks - compatible with different phones - if you have an iphone, specifically, scanning the QR code automatically signs you in - data is automatically loaded into a google sheet that tracks time signatures and name of student CONS: - far as we can tell so far, android process for logging in may involve one extra step of selecting your name from a list - if an area has spotty wireless, an intern may struggle to sign in if they don't also have data - requires an intern to have a device/phone on them at work; this can be problematic for interns who struggle with cell phone use at work - interns don't need to upload apps to their devices so there is no risk of in-app purchases being pushed at interns Here is a how-to video that I used to help me build mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ILnBTYA3w Happy holidays, all! Meaghan PS Winnipeg