Improved Patient Care Through EEG Training for Nurses

It has been shown that continuous monitoring of brain function can significantly improve the outcome of certain critical care patients (e. g. head trauma, coma, post op cardiac, etc.). Accordingly, a new generation of easy-to-use, bedside brain monitors is now being developed and marketed by a number of leading patient care companies (e. g. Hewlett-Packard and others). With the equipment now available, there presents a growing need to train nurses in the fundamentals of continuous brain monitoring, particularly electroencephalographic (EEG) monitoring. We will develop and evaluate a unique, computer-based interactive training system for teaching brain monitoring. The goal is to teach nurses to recognize basic changes in the EEG which, if brought to the attention of physicians, could improve patient outcome. The system is based on a novel electronic EEG generator developed by the company. The generator will be interfaced to a personal computer so that EEG waveforms can be synchronized with an interactive multi-media course on the computer. The course will be developed from both new material and from material in an existing neuromonitoring course. The training system will be evaluated by critical care nurses at a local university hospital.