Mary’s Monthly Message - September 2013 Happy September! While my own children are past the stage of new pencil cases and binders, I know many of you are in the process of sending children of all ages back to a new school year. I hope each of them has a healthy, happy year ahead- and you as well. I only need to look at old school pictures to be reminded of how quickly the school years go by, hope you enjoy these times! As we all know, patient safety is our highest priority at UNC Hospitals, and along those lines I would like to share some data with you that I recently received regarding the use of our Baxter pumps. In my rounding on units and at staff nurse meetings, I have heard a lot of good feedback about these pumps, along with some concerns that we continue to address. One of the metrics that we review in this area is our DERS (Dose Error Reduction System) compliance which is determined by the percentage of instances where a clinician starts an infusion that is programmed using the facility’s pre-defined Drug Library. The use of the Drug Library provides safeguards not available when using the BASIC programming mode on an IV pump. From April 1 through June 30, 2013 there were a total of 155,177 infusions started at UNCH. DERS compliance for those 155,177 starts was 97.2%, 1.2% above the national average. This demonstrates great improvement as compared to our data before we started using these pumps, and is a tremendous accomplishment when you consider that the Baxter pump swap-out was on March 20, 2013. Many thanks to you all for keeping our patients’ safety at the top of our priority list. I also want to remind you that we have two outstanding conferences scheduled for this month. The first is our inaugural Rex-UNCH nursing research conference, “Changing Bedside Practice: One Research Idea at a Time”, Thursday, September 12th at the McKimmon Center in Raleigh. The other is our 9th Nurse Executive Leadership Conference and Frances Ross Memorial Scholarship Presentation program, “IOM Future of Nursing Report: Leading Change, Advancing Health”, Friday, September 20th at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. I am excited to see us continue to lead in these very important topics in nursing. Finally, one of the nicest parts of my job is reading some of the lovely letters that are written to me about our staff. This gracious poem was written by a recent patient on 3 Anderson, and I wanted to share it with you so that you can see how much our patients appreciate the Carolina Care that you give every day: Eileen welcomed me in Amy H picked me up when I was down Eunicia pulled up a chair and held my hand Melissa helped me charge my phone With Megan, Emily, and Laura I was never alone. Christal sang and danced Sylvia and Faye washed my hair With Love in their hearts they did with care All of you made me feel safe when I was insecure Thank you is not enough for what you do You ladies are my angels You bring warmth and sunshine in what you do. Printed with permission, from Mr. R., August 27, 2013 I hope the month ahead is a good one for you. As always, I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Please feel free to email me ([email protected]) with any ideas that you would like to communicate or suggestions that you may have about this or any other topic. Cordially, Mary Tonges
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 01:59:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015