Beacon update

Hey guys,
So it's been a slacker summer and this week I've played catch up. I emailed the notes from the meeting I had with Amanda. From here, I suggest we each meet in our small groups and start making a very rough draft of our individual sections. Since we (and by we I mean me) did not meet today, we should meet in person Thursday August 25 at 5pm so we can get back on track. If you have any questions please let me know and you can always text me at 283-2336.

Emily

Next Meeting

This next meeting is face to face. What do I need to bring, or prepare? I feel we're falling short!

Dates

Last one....I promise!!

Here's a list of pertinent dates we discussed at the meeting today:

4/8/11 - All input for the staff survey and Amanda/Lacy's questions are due!

4/18 - 4/21: Staff meetings. Please be sure to attend the one you signed up for!! This is our biggest push to get surveys out. For those staff who do not attend a meeting, we will be handing them out, as well as emailing. Once staff is finished with the survey, they can put it in a manila envelope in the Beacon Award mailbox (A-14) & need to sign their name on the roster.

*I may have missed the exact date...but if we could have the surveys in by 4/28, it will give us more time to compile our stuff. REMEMBER, OUR GOAL IS 90% OF SURVEYS COMPLETED!

5/10/11 - Reporting on the staff survey results are due on here. THIS COUNTS AS YOUR MEETING FOR APRIL!

5/26/11 - 1700 - SICU break room, face-to-face meeting. We are hoping to have some good info from all of these projects to set some more goals & move forward.

Please take note of all of these & someone jump in if I forgot anything!!

Questions for Amanda & Lacy

Below is the list of questions I started for Amanda & Lacy. Remember that some of these things they may not know, but will be able to better direct us. Just like on the staff survey, please use the comments section to add items to the list. To try to stay organized, if you will also put which section you are working on in your post, that would be great. All input is due by FRIDAY APRIL 8TH. After that, I will compile everything.

*As a side note, I realize some of these are vey abbreviated statements. If you are looking for something specific, please be detailed so we can get the info you need!**

Number of beds in the hospital

Key challenges in the unit & how they are addressed

-technology, people, resources, regulatory requirements

Reward/recognition programs in place

What are they?

How are they evaluated for effectiveness?

How are they improved?

Staffing

How do we account for seasonal variance?

How do we evaluate for appropriateness/effectiveness of staffing?

How is staffing mixed to ensure competency/skill per shift?

Recruiting, hiring, placing, and retaining new staff

How do maintain safe, secure, and supportive environment? (formal & informal)

Unit measures for staff satisfaction?

How do we compare w/ our goals & other comparatives?

Leadership

#1- Amanda & Lacy’s opinion of this

Communication

Objective evaluation of results of decisions, including delayed decisions and indecision

Evidence Based Practice

Sources of EBP used in the unit

Core safety measures

Translate EBP into practice

Research groups/committee

Patient Outcomes

Key outcome measures/results

How do we compare

Healthcare Associated Infections, sentinel events, med reconciliation/error prevention

National Standards

Levels/trends in our unit

Staff Questionaire

Hello everyone! Here is the rough draft of the survey we are going to ask the staff to fill out. Please use the comments section to suggest re-wording of questions OR the addition of any things you need asked to complete your portion of the application. Keep in mind that we want high participation from the staff, so making this survey especially tedious may hurt us. Also, I will be looking over the mentorship questionnaire Peggy gave me to see how we can integrate those questions. Finally, your input is due by FRIDAY, APRIL 8TH. After that, I will be making the final copy so we will be prepared for staff meetings.

What type of nursing degree and/or license do you currently hold?

LVN RN BSN MSN NP Other - SPECIFY

What NATIONAL specialty certifications do you currently hold (ACLS, PALS, etc. does NOT count)?

CCRN CEN Other - SPECIFY

What things, events, etc. affect your satisfaction working in the unit? Please note things that both increase AND decrease your satisfaction.

What currently affects our units ability to access resources, from your point of view?

Do you feel that on an average day that the unit is adequately staffed, both in terms of numbers AND skill/knowledge?

YES NO

Details:

Do you feel that you have the appropriate skills/knowledge to care for the patients assigned to you?

YES NO

Details:

During a difficult or rotating patient assignment, how do others (management, charge nurses, other staff) work to assist with patient loads?

Recognition programs currently in place......

Hey....I made it on here, finally!!! Anyway, Peggy and I met last Thursday and came up with a plethora of questions for Amanda and Lacy. We will present at the meeting this month...or, if y'all prefer we can post them.. let us know.

knowledge management

I was charging tonight so this is the first time I have been able to post. :( My group member and I have met, and I think that I need info from Amanda and Lacy reguarding the patient satisfaction survey numbers, etc. Although I can get some of the information from last year from my evaluation. If anyone has any ideas or thoughts, I would love to hear them!!

Katie- Staffing and Staff engagement

Hello again everyone, Rhonda and I are working on the staffing section.  We have reviewed this section, and beleive that we should be able to answer most of the questions by talking with a few of the charge nurses on the unit.  However, I have come up with a few questions:
For Lacy and Amanda- 
1. How does the unit account for different seasonal fluctuations?
2. How do we evaluate the effectiveness/appropriateness of our staffing decisions?

For the staff survey:
1. Do you think (on average/most days) the unit is adequately staffed?
2. Do you feel that you are adequately trained/qualified to care for the patients assigned to you?
3. During a difficult and or rotating patient assignment, what ways do management, charge nurses, and other staff nurses intervene to help with patient loads?

I'm sure there are many different ways to better word these questions, and I am very open to all suggestions.  Thanks everyone!

Unit Profile/Patient Outcomes

Courtney and I are working on the Unit profile and Patient Outcomes, Questions we would like to include in the staff survey are:

1. Education level
2. CCRN (yes or no)
3. What are key factors that affect staff satisfaction

We will need Amanda and Lacy's direction on where to find patient outcomes.

I am working on Evidence-based practice and processes with Fred. There are 7 specific questions that we are looking. I was working on the first question-How do leaders ensure policies and procedures and protocols used in the unit are based on nationally recognized evidence,standards and best practices? I think VAP and a lot of the SCIP stuff is working toward this.. Catheter assoc infection and how we prevent control it, wounds and foleys and prophylactic abx. There is a lot of info out there I am still going thru. The 2nd question re culture we have poster inservices, P&I studies twice a year with the SWATT team. I have some info for each question but will need further confirming input from the office.Like sources of evidence used based on pt population per question 1. Do we have data collection specific to sicu? At the face to face meeting next month I will be quicker at explaining than typing-not my strong point.

Unit Profile

I'm also working tomorrow, so here's my contribution. :) Emily & I are working on the unit profile/outcomes sections. We can submit pictures with our application, especially those that highlight special things about our unit. Here's our list so far (please add ideas in the comments if you have any thoughts!):

• huddle
• report
• charge nurse report
• staff meetings
• specialty procedures (bronch, line insertion, Swan insertion, etc)
• Annual comps

Of course, all of this will be keeping patient confidentiality in mind.

I will be bringing my camera up to work for a while to try to capture as many things as possible. I'd love to get a ton of photos so we can really have a choice in what we put in our application. We do have a file size limitation, so we can't put in everything, but should be able to get some great things!

Thursday Meeting...

Hey guys I work tomorrow so I will not be able to post during the day so I decided I would post tonight. When Cari and I got together the other day we wanted to see if anyone had any input on one of our questions. One of our questions is "How are unit leaders trained to meet the responsibilities of their role? How are they held accountable?" We listed leaders such as charge nurses, preceptors etc. and came up with ways they are held accountable but our question is how our the managers/directors meaning Amanda and Lacy trained to meet the responsibilities of their role and they are held accountable. If anyone has any feedback on this we would greatly appreciate it. If not we would like to submit this question into the group of questions to Amanda and Lacy.

We also were wondering if we are still making a survey for the unit to get feedback. If so we would like to submit a question for the survey. Our question is "What recognition programs are currently in place in our unit that are most important to staff?" Maybe that isn't the best wording but hopefully that gets my point across.

Anyways thanks for all the help. Look forward to the posts!

One more assignment

Hey guys, in addition to making a list of questions that should be addressed in the employee survey, we need to make a list of questions that we will need Amanda and Lacy's help with. Instead of all of us asking questions at different times, we can give them one list of things we either need them to answer, or need to know where to find the answer.

To answer the rumor mill about open visitation - yes, when the CICU applied, they were told open visitiation was a requirement during a phone call they had. They applied before the application was updated, and I have yet to find any absolute on required visitation hours. Where this impacts us, may be on what level of Beacon Award we can achieve. If we all want, we can email/call the AACN and see what they say.

This is a test

Just making sure I understand this blog input. I too have heard concern re open visiting but I believe the application info is new and that is not part of the requirement anymore.

visitation

Last week at work I heard some buzz from the coworkers who were upset about the Beacon Award because they heard a rumor from Steven from CICU that you have to have open visitation on your unit to be a Beacon recipient. I told them I did not believe that to be true, and they were very pushy about us NOT doing the Beacon award if this was the case. Let me know what you guys know about this. I have not seen that in the literature anywhere. Maybe Steven was just stirring up the pot.

Welcome to our blog!

Hello everyone!  I hope that this blog will be sufficient for our needs.  We have many different options available to us for customization if there is anything you would like me to change.  If you notice in the top left hand corner of the screen (under the title of the page) I have included a link to the AACN website.  If there are any other links you would like for me to include for everyone's convenience, please just let me know.  A few requests:  If you are posting something for the whole group to see, please try to use a new "post" each time.  However, if you simply need to reply to what someone else has posted, then commenting on that post will be sufficient.  Please remember that for each "meeting" we have online, we will be responsible for posting our required material by 5PM (please post material as a new "post".)  Call me, e-mail me, or ask me in person if there is anything I can help with.  -Thanks-