Comprehensive nursing tool offered to MUSC Health-Catawba Division clinical staff

With thousands of care team members working across the state, MUSC Health provides a particularly valuable educational resource that Patsy Hawkins, R.N., Education director for the MUSC Health-Catawba Division, describes as a “gift to all employees.” This “gift” is Elsevier’s ClinicalKey for Nursing site, which provides comprehensive, reliable information for nurses and interprofessional teams, enabling consistent care, according to its website. It’s the official evidenced-based clinical reference guide for nursing; however, there is something for all health care workers. 

MUSC Health-Charleston Division pays the membership subscription for all employees, including all Regional Health Network facilities. Employees have access to over 7,000 professional journals. They can also subscribe to one for free, and it’s delivered to their MUSC email accounts monthly. 

Hawkins has worked at Lancaster Medical Center since MUSC acquired the facility in 2019. Before assuming the role as Education director, she worked at the facility for more than 30 years in critical care. She said this type of resource could make a huge impact if more people knew what it has to offer. 

“It's been the gold standard for evidence-based nursing skills,” said Hawkins. “If you have a procedure, it goes through step by step of how to do the procedure. Any tools you would need, things to gather, supply list. It teaches you. You have a competency list on it afterward to test on it, so it 100% provides everything you need.”

The Elsevier site is accessible to MUSC Health employees via a link on the main intranet page. As an educator, Hawkins said she encourages her students throughout the Catawba Division to utilize this resource as much as possible. 

“If anyone's in school, they can pull up journal articles and evidence-based papers.
You can see the Trissel’s drug compatibility guides are in here, but here we have books, journals, procedure videos and multimedia,” explained Hawkins.

She said that a resource like this is extremely useful to medical professionals in any discipline, explaining that a “big perk” of it being online is that it is always up to date. 

“We don't have to wait a year for the printed material. Sometimes, with a printed book, it can be outdated by the time it gets printed and published,” Hawkins said. “This is in real-time. It is updated continually, and it's a trustworthy site. It is the gold standard. So, it's invaluable.”