All Entries Tagged With: "nursing"

Nurses Week: Contest to win a free webcast on preventing CAUTIs!

Nurses Week – More offerings from HCPro!

HCPro celebrates National Nurses Week!

Cool app to help nurses, but does it foster bad habits?

Robert Freeman, a registered nurse at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, designed an mobile app for nurses that includes a database of more than 10,000 medical abbreviations and a news feed specific to the nursing profession, according to the New York Daily News. Freeman said the idea for a nursing app came to him when a colleague could not decipher an abbreviation on a patient’s chart. He indicates that nursing students will benefit the most from using the app as a learning tool, but that it will also improve efficiency and productivity for all nurses by quickly answering queries.

Freeman spent three months researching the information necessary to design “Nurse Net,” his free app. The app includes tools such as the Credentialer, which clarifies the abbreviations for various certifications and credentials used by health professionals, and the Abbreviation Assistant, which interprets abbreviations found on medical charts. “Nurse Net” became available in the Apple Store in November and has been downloaded more than 12,000 times since then.

I wonder how patient safety and quality professionals (yes, you) felt about these kind of apps. Personally, I worry about a nurse who, instead of clarifying an abbreviation (which may be a “do-not-use” abbreviation!) with the physician, consults an app. I would always prefer communication between humans when possible rather than consulting a third source, even if it is a bit of effort. Also, speaking directly with the physician might help avoid future issues with that physician’s notes. Is consulting the app a workaround here? And don’t forget, an app isn’t responsible for being right; it’s not responsible for being updated, and most importantly, isn’t responsible for keeping your patients safe. It’s a product, like anything else, even if it’s free and developed by a nurse with the best of intentions.

Are we teaching the right thing here? Weigh in below.

What might patient safety have to do with the joy and spirit of caregiving?

Editor’s note: Columnist Catherine Hinz, MHA, currently works at PatientSafe Solutions, Inc. Previously, she served as the patient lead at HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, MN, worked for seven years as an ED health unit coordinator, and has completed a patient safety internship with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The following is an excerpt from the October 2011 issue of Patient Safety Monitor Journal.

With the advent of electronic health record implementation, never-ending administrative duties, and unrelenting changes, it’s no surprise that practitioners often talk about losing the joy of caregiving. In fact, many patient safety and quality conferences have begun to focus on this theme. Practitioners often lament that medicine is becoming less of a “craft” and turning into a standardized methodology-sucking the joy out of caregiving and making the art of their practice obsolete. Of course, the other side argues that the need to minimize variation and practice pure, objective, evidence-based medicine should be the norm and not the exception.

This divide is especially acute when the conversation centers on clinical practice guidelines, order sets, protocols, and what some providers refer to as “cookbook medicine.” It can lead to a dynamic and sometimes dangerous discussion in any room with a mixed administrative and clinical audience.

At the recent National Quality Colloquium, one session focused on how physician engagement affects the organizational and patient safety culture. It became clear that given the immense changes under way in the U.S. healthcare system, and the need to reduce variation, eliminate waste, and improve quality, practitioners’ feelings of autonomy loss are bound to become more pronounced.

The discussion at NQC reminded me of a recent meeting in my own company. We had invited a group of nursing executives to engage in dialogue with us for a half day, discussing their challenges, needs, and hopes for their frontline staff and organizations. Beyond some of the typical things we expected to hear, like “we have scorecards coming out our ears” and “our systems are so complex, it makes any process improvement work daunting,” we heard something else loud and clear: “If you are going to bring any new technology into our environment, it should help put the spirit back in nursing.”

Log-in to read the full column in Patient Safety Monitor Journal.

Nominate a star for the HCPro 2011 Nursing Image Awards

Nominations are open for the HCPro 2011 Nursing Image Awards, which honor nurses whose leadership, teamwork, or clinical expertise embodies an image of nursing excellence and contributes to improving patient care, quality outcomes, nurse satisfaction, and the healthcare environment.

HCPro is searching for nurses and nurse leaders who have helped elevate the image of nursing. Awards will be presented to an individual or team of nurses and to a nursing leader in two categories:

1. The image of nursing in leadership: Honors a nursing leader who embodies a positive image of nursing through his or her leadership excellence.
2. The image of nursing in clinical practice: Recognizes individual nurses or nursing teams who portray a positive image of nursing through their clinical excellence.

The winners will be announced in November.

Editor’s note: The deadline for the HCPro 2011 Nursing Image Awards nominations is July 31, 2011. For more information about the awards, official rules and selection criteria, and to submit nominations, visit www.hcpro.com/2011nursingimageawards.

Winners of the Nursing Image Awards announced

I’d like to share with you the winners of HCPro’s annual Nursing Image Awards. Of course, nurses are a critical component to patient safety and quality patient care.

The Nursing Image Awards recognize nurses and nurse leaders who have helped elevate the image of nursing through exceptional leadership, teamwork, or clinical accomplishments. The awards celebrate an image of nursing excellence upheld by commitments to improving patient care, quality outcomes, nurse satisfaction, and the healthcare environment.

The winners were selected from hundreds of entries in two categories: Image of Nursing in Clinical Practice and Image of Nursing in Leadership Practice.

Rebecca Schorn, RN, BSN, is the Clinical Practice winner. Schorn is a nurse clinical level IV in the PICU at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE.

Karen Hill, DNP, MSN, CNAA, BC, FACHE, is the Leadership Practice winner. Hill started out at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, KY, as a teenage candy striper. Today, she’s a visionary vice-president and chief nurse executive.

Read more about the winners and the runner ups by visiting HealthLeaders Media.

Quality Safety Investigator program empowers nurses

The University of Kansas Hospital (KUMED) has created a program to encourage nurse involvement in patient safety. Called the Quality Safety Investigators (QSI), nurses in the program are bedside caregivers who are given tools, resources, and training by KUMED to focus on unit-specific initiatives.

I heard of the QSI program during an interview for an article about the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program® (MRP). I spoke with Liz Carlton, RN, MSN, CCRN, director of quality, safety, and regulatory compliance at KUMED who also had a hand in creating the QSI program. She extolled the virtues of giving staff nurses the power and responsibility of being in charge of improvement projects, and also the benefits of being in a type of membership group at the organization.

Those nurses who are interested in becoming QSIs go through an application process and once they are selected, their managers must also sign contracts stating that they will allow the QSIs to participate in activities away from the unit because of their QSI status.

To read more, see the full article published with HealthLeaders Media.

Does your facility have any type of nursing empowerment group, like the QSI program? If so, do you think it is of benefit to both the facility and the nurses who are a part of it?

Nurses week is coming up–what does it say about the image of nursing?

I came across a column by Rebecca Hendren, a colleague of mine, on HealthLeadersMedia.com about the need for nurses week. The annual observance is quickly approaching (May 6-12) and often serves as a chance for healthcare facilities to recognize the hard work that their nurses put in each day in caring for patients and keeping them safe. However, Rebecca brings up another point about the week, and that is that perhaps the money and effort spent on celebrating nurses for one week of the year would be better placed in a year-round effort of acknowledging that nurses are smart professionals who should be valued everyday.

She asks at the beginning of her column if we really need nurses week anymore, and although she says we do because many nurses appreciate the attention and thanks during that time, might it be better for the profession if there was no nurses week?

Here’s the part I like best:

Let’s frame this year’s Nurse Week festivities less in the context of nurses as angelic heroes (they are) and celebrate the highly-skilled professionals who possess critical-thinking, problem-solving, and care coordination skills that ensure patient safety every day.

I don’t think that the idea of nurses week is bad. I am all in favor of taking some time out each year to show employees that they are valued. However, I do think this notion of using the week as a means of all out celebration might be better placed on recognizing that the nurse-led initiatives throughout the year that make a difference, for example.

I thought it was an interesting column and am eager to hear your thoughts. Does your facility celebrate nurses week?  Do you enjoy the festivities? What are your thoughts?

Study: Improved nurse-patient ratios could reduce mortality rates

A recent study authored by renowned nurse investigator Linda Aiken, PhD, FAAN, FRCN, RN, found that California’s nursing ratio laws, which went into effect in 2004, have helped improve quality outcomes, especially when compared with states that do not have as strict ratios, reports HealthLeaders Media.

The study, published in the journal Health Services Research, compared outcomes data reported to the state for patients in California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Analysis showed that the 30-day adjusted patient mortality rate was significantly lower in California than in the other two states. Researchers found that had Pennsylvania and New Jersey implemented staff ratios equivalent to California’s, they would have seen 10.6 and 13.9 % fewer deaths, respectively.

The study was anxiously awaited by many, as the debate in California over mandated nurse-patient ratios remains. The law requires that a nurse must care for no more than five patients on a medical-surgical unit, four pediatric patients, two in intensive care, six in a psychiatric unit, and three in labor and delivery, reports HealthLeaders Media. This is the first major study to illustrate that the nurse ratios mandated in California have helped lower mortality rates.

I know this is a “hot button” issue around the country, and I’m wondering what strategy your facility has taken? Have you had to convince leadership to hire more nurses as a quality improvement strategy? Are you waiting for more evidence?