PROVIDENCE – The Hasbro Children’s Hospital pediatric intensive care unit nursing staff has won a Silver Beacon Award for Excellence from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses for exceptional patient care and healthy work environments.
The award sets the HCH PICU among 16 pediatric intensive care units in the U.S. and the only nursing unit in the state to hold Beacon Award designation.
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As part of the Beacon Award criteria, the PICU needed to present outcomes for metrics for staffing effectiveness, staff satisfaction, patient satisfaction and various clinical outcomes. In each of these metrics the PICU compared itself to national benchmarks and could demonstrate favorable outcomes and continued improvement over time.
Lisa Paolino, clinical manager of the Hasbro Children’s Hospital PICU, described some of the practices that helped them win the award.
“We have strategies in place where we can get feedback for staff,” Paolino said. “The good and not-so-good,” at the leadership level.
The PICU also holds a morning huddle with staff to talk about the previous 24 hours.
“And we try to predict the upcoming 24 hours what might go wrong so we can be on top of it,” Paolino said.
The PICU also approaches staffing from a flexible, on-demand perspective, she said. During the winter, they see a spike in children with respiratory infections, so they need more staff on duty. In the summer, the PICU is much less busy. So, the PICU allows staff the flexibility to work more in the winter and less in the summer.
The PICU staff also uses its intranet to share tips and best practices, Paolino said. With central lines, intravenous lines used to treat patients over a long period of time, medical facilities see frequent infections.
Using the intranet, staff members were able to use tips from their colleagues to avoid central-line infections for the last 14 months.
“The Beacon Award for Excellence recognizes our PICU nursing staff who serve as role models for excellent patient and family care,” said Myra Edens, administrative director of Hasbro Children’s Hospital. “It signifies continuous learning and a systematic approach for optimizing evidence-based patient care, outcomes and satisfaction.”
“The Beacon Award for Excellence recognizes caregivers in stellar units whose consistent and systematic approach to evidence-based care optimizes patient outcomes,” said AACN President Christine Schulman. “Units that receive this national recognition serve as role models to others on their journey to excellent patient and family care.”
Rob Borkowski is a PBN contributing writer.
