Introducing SPARK! Online CE Education & Mentoring for Nurses & Technicians
We Built a Thing!
Most people don’t know the Medical Education Institute (MEI) by name—we tend to be known by our work, like: Home Dialysis Central, My Kidney Life Plan, Kidney School, Life Options, the Core Curriculum for the Dialysis Technician, the MATCH-D, PATH-D, KDQOL Complete, our UFR Calculator…there is a lot. (We’ve been busy since 1993).
I first learned about MEI as a new home training nurse through the (now out of print) Help, I Need Dialysis! book (the successor is My Kidney Life: A New Direction), which pointed me here: to Home Dialysis Central. I read Life@Home articles, KidneyViews blogs and the HDC forums and learned as much as I could. Stuart Mott’s videos on buttonhole cannulation are absolutely brilliant! Then, I went through the KidneySchool Idea Guide and modules.
My point is, we have a lot of content. And, on top of all of the things mentioned already, MEI is a CE provider for nurses and technicians.
We spent the past year growing and watering new professional CE offerings. We built our own Learning Management System, the MEI Learning Center and within that, a brand-new program called SPARK, supported by an unrestricted educational grant from FME.
What’s SPARK?
SPARK is our Self-guided Program to Advance Renal Knowledge (we have a gift for acronyms, don’t you agree?), which combines professional education and mentoring in CE courses for nurses and technicians.
All of the SPARK courses:
Integrate communication, empathy, and problem-solving with up-to-date, researched content.
Orient staff to patients and their needs, values, partners, and environment
Include video-based, online mentoring to increase confidence and competence.
Encourage collaboration, ongoing education, and safety for patients and professionals.
Reinforce knowledge through case-based learning exams, to apply the new knowledge.
SPARK PD and Home HD Topics
We aimed to start out SPARK by addressing the biggest industry-wide challenges to PD and Home HD in a unique and engaging way. If you have ever taken a CE course online, SPARK is likely very different. It’s vibrant, empathetic, informative and…dare I say it, a little bit fun! You’ll find a lot of visuals and videos—and stories that can help strengthen your skills, build your confidence, and boost long-term success for home dialysis training programs.
(I’m going to pause here for a moment to clarify that I am writing this post because our SPARK courses are absolutely in line with our MEI mission and I am excited for you to know about them! Not because self-promotion excites me. It doesn’t.)
What does excite me is that SPARK is the resource I wish I’d had when I was starting my first home dialysis nursing job. It goes beyond “lift handle, open door, flip switch” basics to offer insights, practical tips, and solutions to connect with, motivate, and effectively teach patients.
Mentoring for PD and Home HD Nurses
Dialysis is mentioned—but not taught—in nursing school. Nurses typically receive employer-based education and training and initially work under one or more experienced nurses to gain the skills to function independently.
Home dialysis nursing is a narrow subspecialty that has existed as
long as dialysis, but has even fewer experts working in and teaching
it. Before we can increase and sustain patient use of home therapies,
we need more nurses who know how.
As we all know, nurses are leaving the profession at a faster rate than new hires can get up to speed. Priceless knowledge is being lost. Corporations try to fill the void with annual meetings, in-services, and sending selected nurses to conferences. This helps. But we wanted to make mentored learning accessible to as many nurses and technicians as possible. That’s what drove us to build SPARK.
I was very lucky as a new home training nurse. I learned from nurses who had more than 100 years of total experience in home HD and PD—and have since retired. Some of the most profound things I learned from them were anecdotal and stemmed from having seen a continuum of home dialysis over decades.
SPARK is a way of pushing that wisdom forward, with a similar tone and pace to direct mentorship.
Current SPARK Offerings
Preventing Home Dialysis Dropout
Setting Patient Expectations for Home Dialysis (PD & Home HD)
Setting Staff Expectations for Home Dialysis (PD & Home HD)
Training for Home Dialysis Success (PD & Home HD)
Preventing Early PD Dropout
Preventing Early Home HD Dropout
Integrating Home Dialysis into Life (PD & Home HD)
“The Flip”—Switching from PD to Home HD
Patient Safety at Home
Preventing and Managing PD Complications and Emergencies
Preventing Home HD Complications
Managing Home HD Emergencies
SPARK includes a set of free, matching Ready-Set Home eClasses for patients:
What to Expect from PD Training and the First Few Months at Home
What to Expect from Home Hemodialysis (HD) Training
Your First Few Months at Home on HD
Switching from PD to Home HD: What to Expect
Disaster Planning for PD and Home HD
These new e-Classes correspond to the SPARK CE series for home training nurses to offer their patients to reinforce their teaching. And, each of the new patient eClasses has a matching 2-sided printable hand-out.
Check out the SPARK courses! We hope you love them. Tell all your friends!
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