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What can you learn about the patient experience from dolls?

By Jeff on Oct 31, 2009 in Featured, Patient Experience

A lot apparently.

In an article about the patient experience from HealthLeaders Media, Gar Crispell, general manager for American Girl, talked about the ways that the American Girl Doll Hospital works to provide a great patient experience for the dolls that visit it and their owners. One thing that the article mentions is their consistency and how they strive to delight with each interaction. If you want to see what that kind of patient experience brings just go to YouTube and look at all the “American Girl Doll back from the hospital videos” are out there. These are little girls who love their dolls and take the time to film and upload a video about it when they get them back.

Here is a video of a little girl as she gets one of her dolls back from the hospital. Imagine if your patients and their family’s got that excited about their stay with you.

And here is a blog post from the mom of a little girl whose doll visited the American Girl Doll Hospital, read it and the comments and you will see what their focus on patient experience can do.

The people at the American Girl Doll Hospital are able to do this without knowing a lot about their patients. But as nurses and nurse managers who have the ability to talk to and learn about your patients your job should be much easier. Great patient experience only comes from one place. The hospital staff and most often those on the front line of providing that experience are nurses. And the happier the nurses the better the patient experience. So as a nurse manager what are you doing to help make your nurses happy and teach them to pass that on to your hospital’s patients?

Can special talents of your nurses improve patient care?

By Jeff on Oct 03, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

I came across an article on HealthLeadersMedia.com the other day about nurses at Arundel Medical Center using their artistic touch to liven up patients rooms that were undergoing renovations, by painting uplifting scenes on the windows that were covered top protect patients from viewing the bright lights from the welders. Staff, patients and visitors all said the paintings help improve the atmosphere of the floor.

But it made me wonder what other ways could nurse managers give the nurses a chance to use the talents of the nurses in their unit to help improve patient care and the atmosphere of their unit. Making crafts? Writing stories? Being a clown?

Is there anything you have done or our doing? Let’s hear ‘em.

Can you manage a robot?

By Jeff on Sep 25, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Shortage

When I was a kid I was promised by the media and entertainment industries two things, we would all wear the same clothes with metallic rings around the shoulders and we all would have robots helping us by the year 2000. I am still waiting on the uniform, but the robot thing may be getting closer.

In an aim to help alleviate their nursing shortage, researchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research have created a teddy bear looking robot nurse that can help lift and move patients that weigh up to 135 lbs. The robot is called RIBA (Robot for Interactive Body Assistance) and is an upgrade from a previous model that could only lift 40lbs.

It has a soft skin and can recognize voices and faces. It will also follow spoken commands and is built to maneuver in tight spaces, like a hospital room.

I can see where this would be a big help in reducing the nursing shortage here in the United States if it lifted more than 135 lbs (which I imagine is in the works). People under 135 lbs is a very small percentage of American patients. But overall think of all the nurses who could stay in the field longer and the new ones that may enter it if were not for the physical strain nursing can place on a body. This means that nurses would be able to spend more time focusing on the clinical level of patient care.

I don’t know about how much one of these robots costs, but you would think there have to be some substantial cost savings that would come from this. Between retraining staff, lost time and Workman’s comp cost from injuries from lifting and the ability to need less nurses and nurses aids to move patients, the savings would seem to be there.

Over at Reality Rounds is a pretty funny response to the idea. What about you? Would you like to see this at your hospital?

Improve your nursing staff morale

By Jeff on Aug 01, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

As you know, a simple thank you can actually raise the morale among your nurses and help keep their energy and enthusiasm up through their shift.

Unfortunately, it is easy to forget such fundamental practices when your lives and schedule as nursing and staffing managers are so busy. But simple acts of kindness and and appreciation, like a thank you note after a rough day, can protect your nurses from contracting a “staff infection,” which often times can result in stress, conflict, low morale and turnover.

That’s why we put together a fun little handout with some simple tips to help you help your nursing staff. Check it out, you can download the 7 Steps to Better Nursing Morale ebook here.

Refreshing nursing skills?

By Jeff on Jul 25, 2009 in Featured, Healthcare Hiring, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing, Travel Nurses

A post and comment thread on a great blog over at the HCA West Florida Recruitment Blog brought up the point about nurses returning to the profession due to the economic recession after time away and their need to take part in “Back to Nursing” type programs to refresh their skills.

Here are some other nursing articles and resources I found on this topic:

Career Focus: Refresher Programs Help Nurses Return to Work
RN Refresher Courses at Nurse.com | Nationwide Refresher Course
Nurse Refresher.com
NurseWeek: You Can Go Home Again

One thing to keep in mind as you look to bring more permanent nurses on that are reentering the workforce, is that if it takes longer than you would like to get them going, but know that they will be worth the time investment, you may want to still look at travel or temporary nursing staff as an interim. Especially considering the quicker orientation time of a travel nurse typically. In fact a travel nurse with their wide range of backgrounds could be very useful in bringing a re-entry nurse up to speed pretty quickly.

Is this something you are seeing at your hospital as well? If so how long is it taking to get them up to speed? What are your thoughts?

How do you orient travel nurses?

By Jeff on Jul 17, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management, Travel Nurses

One of the big concerns of nurse managers and hospital staffing managers is the length of time it takes to truly orient a new travel nurse into their hospital and unit. This is an understandable concern, if you consider you only have a temporary nurse for basically three months at your unit and if they are there, then most likely the hospital has an immediate need and getting them working as quickly as possible is crucial. The norm seems to be anywhere from a half-day to three days of orientation, whereas a permanent nurse may receive anywhere from a week to two weeks of orientation.

Because they are travel nurses coming to you through a travel nursing company you should be able to trust that the agency has qualified their skills and competency as a nurse, but there are still going to be still simple things like where are your supplies, where is the cafeteria, how is the floor organized, etc. that need ingrained quickly.

Obviously the orientation of a nurse is something that needs a delicate balance of speed and thoroughness, but there are not a lot of resources out there to help you build a quick, but effective orientation plan. At least that I could find. But, maybe we can help each other.

I would love to be able to provide some simple advice for our hospital clients (hopefully that is some of you) on how to make their orientation the most effective for them and for our travelers and I think you should be able to share with others hospital staffing and HR professionals the things that have worked for you. Handbooks? Quizzes? Mentors? Tour Guides? Puppet shows?

So if you have a second please share. If you want to be anonymous just send me an email at Jeff.Long@MedicalSolutions.com.

Work life balance for nurse managers: Reduce your stress

By Jeff on Jul 11, 2009 in Featured

If you look at your life as made up of three parts, with one leg representing your home/life, another representing your work life and another representing your mental well-being (physical, spiritual, holistic) it is easy to see how letting one area lag or another become too large can really throw you off balance and lead to nurse manager burnout.

Here is a collection of great links that are meant to help you address your mental well-being (don’t worry we will cover the other two legs of your life’s stool soon):

Stress Relief Tips for Busy Women
Stress Reduction Tips
Stress Reduction: Starting the Day
Tips For Stress

Are there any things you do that you think would be a help to other nurse managers?

Is your nursing staff burning out?

By Jeff on Jun 26, 2009 in Featured, Nursing Staff Management

We continue to see a lot of interest in the topic of nurse staff burnout coming to this blog. When even one of your staff is burned out it can cause such an emotional drain on you as a healthcare leader, your staff and your family.

We wanted to see what we can do to help the first thing we did was put together a quick poll to see how your hospital staff is doing? Let us know.

Work life balance for nurse managers

By Jeff on Jun 05, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Management, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

We have seen a lot of interest in nursing staff burnout lately, both through searches that find this blog and our other blog (TravelNursingBlogs.com), but also in the media and healthcare blogosphere in general, and in nursing forums and social networks. It is obvious that the economy and change in working conditions for nurses is taking its toll and nurses may be nearing the tipping point, when their physical and emotional health concerns outweigh their financial concerns. Let’s face it, people can only work 50-60 hours a week for so long.

But this post is about you the nurse manager. How many hours are you working? Are you sacrificing your work life balance at the expense of your emotional and physical well being? If you are, stop. You may be hurting patient care just as much as your burned out staff.

How? As a their manager, your nurses take their behavioral cues from you, so if you are stressed and burned out, that is going to impact them and the patient care they give. It is pretty simple:
Happy Manager + Happy Staff = Happy Patient

And we all know that happy patients come back to your hospital and recommend you to their family and friends, increasing hospital revenue and making your hospital CFO and CMO happy. Plus when hospital revenue is up, so many other good things happen, new programs that help patients can be implemented, additional staff can be brought on to improve nurse to patient ratios and so many other side benefits that come with being a financially sound hospital.

So the real question is how do you achieve that work life balance as a nurse manager with so many people relying on you, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your employees? That is where you have to get creative. And where this series should help, over the next couple of posts I will be bringing you a series of articles to help you find work/life balance as a nursing manager. Stay tuned.

Build your best nursing unit

By Jeff on Jun 03, 2009 in Featured, Hospital Staffing, Nursing Staff Management

Right now having a full and consistent nursing staff has probably never been easier, thanks to the current economic drivers masking over the nursing shortage you are probably seeing the benefit being nurses that are more than willing to pick up an extra shift, great older nurses are hanging around a little longer and your internal float pool is overflowing. The challenge now is to manage that situation and take full advantage of the opportunities it gives you and your hospital to address some areas that normally cause nurse turnover and burnout. Some things you can do to fully utilize this time are:

Improve your nurse retention efforts
Develop future nursing leaders
Evaluate unit processes and build teamwork among nurses
Improve as a nursing leader
Put more recognition efforts in place
Improve the participation of the nurses in your units in the decision-making process
Find ways to establish professional growth opportunities
None of these initiatives have to cost a lot of money if they are done with some imagination. Here are some resources for each area:

Improve your nurse retention efforts
Use mentors to improve nurse retention
Improve Your Nurse Retention With The LifeWings Program
Improving Nurse Retention in Jordanian Public Hospitals: Discussion

Develop future nursing leaders
Attributes and Competencies Needed by Future Nurse Leaders and Managers*
Transformational Nursing Leadership
Developing Future Nursing Leaders for Today’s Nurse Leader: What are my responsibilities?

Evaluate unit processes and Build teamwork among nurses
Building Blocks of Teamwork
Effective strategies can reduce turnover rates, improve group cohesion and nurse satisfaction �
Quality work environments for nurse and patient safety
Building a Collaborative Nursing Practice to Promote Patient Education: An Inpatient and Outpatient Partnership

Improve yourself as a nursing leader
Nursing leadership
Leadership and nursing care management
What leadership styles should senior nurses develop?

Put more recognition efforts in place
Ways to Reward Employees (Without Spending a Dime)
10 No-Cost Ways to Recognize Employees
Five Tips for Effective Employee Recognition: How to Reward, Recognize, Award, and Thank People Successfully

Improve the participation of the nurses in your units in the decision-making process
Nurses Transform Unwieldy Decision-Making, Go Back to Bedside
Barriers to effective clinical decision making in nursing
Evidenced Based Nursing

Find ways to establish professional growth opportunities
National Nursing Staff Development Organization�
NurseLearn
Staff development nursing secrets

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