Kenmore Kronicle Nursing Newsletter

November 2014

The Kenmore Kronicle A Newsletter for the Nursing Staff at Kenmore Mercy Hospital

You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of God’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.

2 Corinthians 9:11-12

Thank You for My Life Dear God, thank you for my life on this earth, however challenging or not.

Thank you for giving me free will to love and be loved, to make my own decisions, to learn from my mistakes, to laugh when I am happy, to cry when I am sad.

Thank you for my family, my friends, my pets, my colleagues, and for every other living creature I meet along my journey.

Thank you for giving me strength to overcome adversity, to do what’s right for the benefit of the greater good, to rise above negativity.

Thank you for giving me hope for an end to world suffering, pain, and war, for a beginning of a world filled with light and everlasting love.

Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving with gratitude for all you do for our patients. ~ Cheryl

Remodeled 2 West Ready to Open We are pleased to reopen the recently renovated the 2 West Patient Care Unit on November 22.

Associates will be welcomed back to a brand new nurses’ station with a beautiful wooden finish. In addition, all rooms and hallways have been repainted, the floors have been cleaned and waxed, and the sinks in the patient rooms were replaced.

Last, but not least, the unit has new white information boards. New boards for the rest of the units are expected to arrive by the end of the year.

The 2 West Patient Care Unit will also be the home of Kenmore Mercy’s new bariatric room, complete with a new bariatric bed, equipment and lift.

Thank you to everyone involved in the planning and implementation of this project, especially the 2 West nurses who went through moving out and back into the unit.

Rapid Response Team Vital for Patient The Rapid Response Team (RRT) is available 24 hours a day at Kenmore Mercy. Any nurse may call a Rapid Response by dialing the “five fives” (55555) to summon the team to come to evaluate a patient who has developed signs or symptoms of clinical deterioration.

At times the nurse may call the team to evaluate a patient that they just have a “gut” feeling that something needs attention.

The goal of the team is to treat these warning signs early so that the patients outcome may be improved and a respiratory or cardiac arrest be prevented.

Any nurse may make an independent decision to call a RRT for their patient. You are the patient advocate and you are empowered to do what is best for the patients so therefore do not hesitate to call an RRT immediately if you feel it would benefit the patient’s well-being. No one, including physicians, should dispute your decision for initiating a RRT.

Reminder Medication Boxes Upon patient discharge please remember to check the patient’s medication box to ensure the patient receives their medication.

Also, please make sure insulin pens and the inhalers are emptied out. An occurrence happened in which a patient was given the inhaler belonging to the previous patient partly because the inhaler was left in the box and partly because the clinician did not correctly identify the patient and medication.

The same thing could happen with insulin pens. When the pen is not removed from the medication box prior to admission, the newly admitted patient could be injected with another patients pen.

So please make sure medication boxes are emptied when the patient is discharged. Thank you!

The Big “Dots” Do you know about Kenmore Mercy Hospital’s “Big Dots?” Those who were able to make it the our recent Associate Forums learned that these are our our 2014 priorities.

These include Patient Experience/Safety, Surgical Services, Orthopedic Campus of Excellence, Operational Effectiveness, Clinical Integration and Magnet Status.

Be sure to keep up on how we are accomplishing these goals by reading our Connections Newsletter and attending the Associate Forums that occur twice a year.

Thank you to everyone who attended the fall sessions.

Find Us Online!

Kenmore Mercy Hospital Nursing now has an Intranet site to help keep nurses updated.

Based on recommendations from our Nursing Council, you’ll find information about Magnet, construction updates, retirements, certifications, committees, committee champions and policy changes.

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Patient Experience

Admit Project Reduces Wait Times Congratulations to Kenmore Mercy Hospital’s nurses for their successful reduction of admit wait time for patients moving from the Emergency Department to the inpatient beds.

Their recommended Bed Ahead processes, put in place on October 1, decreased the time interval from the decision to admit by the physician to physical departure from the emergency department by 20%.

As of last week, the 849 patients that were admitted waited an average of 109 minutes. The average in 2014 for this step in the admission process was 143 minutes. That’s a savings of 481 hours of time for our patients and associates!

Through Bed Ahead, there is a constant flow of communication between the Emergency Department, patient floors nursing supervision and environmental services. It allows planning ahead throughout a 24/7 cycle to ensure clean beds are available for incoming patients.

Thank you to the interdisciplinary team — made up of Emergency, Intensive Care Unit, and Medical Surgical nurses, unit clerks, patient access, environmental service and nursing supervisors and quality — whose knowledge of the patient journey helped make the amazing improvement possible.

The group started meeting in August and within the first two months identified multiple sources of delay as well as improvement tactics that focused on communication and planning ahead for each admitted patient.

Kudos to everyone who has a part in sustaining this very important project.

Patient In Seen by Arrives Bed Provider

Care Patient Ready Clean Bed Patient Completed To Move Assigned Departs ED

A Very Special Thank You! Thank you to all of our associates for their dedication and support during the recent unprecedented winter storm.

Even though Kenmore Mercy Hospital did not experience the amount of snow that Mercy did, many of you made sacrifices, traveling during the storm and working over to ensure the care of our patients.

I want you to know that Nursing leadership and the hospital Administration appreciate everyone’s efforts and sacrifice to help Kenmore Mercy Hospital get safely through the storm.

We are proud of our nurses, nursing aides, unit clerks and all of the ancillary departments who are responsible for making Kenmore Mercy Hospital a place where patients experience quality care even through adversity.

I am grateful to work with such dedicated and caring individuals. ~ Cheryl