Nursing Innovation

• IV Pump Integration Project

  The medical center is the largest health system to integrate electronic infusion pumps, also called IV pumps, with patients’ electronic health records (EHR) via the medical center’s Integrated Healthcare Information System (IHIS). The IV pumps allow doctors and pharmacists to prescribe medications by recording them directly into patients’ EHRs. The orders are automatically sent to the IV pump to dispense the medication. This new workflow eliminates the need for nursing staff to transcribe the order into the machine by hand, which greatly minimizes transcription errors that can occur at a higher rate using manual entry. Once the pump begins, IHIS receives information from the pump to confirm that the settings match the order. The first phase of the project spanned 18 months and has already returned significant positive results on behalf of both the medical center’s patients and staff. While increasing patient safety was the primary impetus behind the project, the organization has also realized substantial time and cost savings.

• Video Sitter

  The medical center was the first hospital to build a video sitter into its electronic health record, and this technology is now used in 220 patient rooms throughout our hospitals. The patient-monitoring system provides viewing of multiple patients, in their rooms, from a single, central monitoring location. PCAs are trained to monitor the video feeds from cameras in patient rooms and techs can achieve two-way communication with the patients via a microphone. This is an incredibly valuable tool for patients at higher risk for falls or other safety events.

• MyHealthTrack App

  Rose Chumita, a registered nurse at the Ohio State Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital, developed an app called MyHealthTrack. The program warns users when their numbers fluctuate too high or too low while giving immediate feedback and suggestions. Patients can easily make cause-and-effect connections between, for example, their blood pressure and diet that day. While patients log data into the app, Chumita and other health care providers back at the hospital are able to view their patients’ numbers and offer more individualized suggestions to each person.

• Trauma-Informed Care

  The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is one of the first hospitals to translate trauma-informed care to the bedside. Education is continually underway in departments across the organization to educate staff on these concepts. Approaching patient care in a trauma-informed way has been shown to decrease staff injuries and alleviate frustration and stress for caregivers as they can more effectively work with patients. When implemented in Ohio State Harding Hospital in 2013, there was a drastic decrease in staff injuries.

• NICHE Unit

  Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) is a nursing education and consultation program designed to improve geriatric care in health care organizations. University Hospital’s 11 East Rhodes Unit has specially trained RNs known as GRNs (geriatric resource nurses) who care for the elderly population in a “neighborhood” on the unit where those patients are cohorted.

• Dedicated Education Units

  This is a collaboration between the medical center and Ohio State’s College of Nursing. This concept integrates nursing students into a given nursing unit where her or she can spend more time 1:1 with a nurse preceptor. Ultimately, this results in better prepared nurse graduates and serves as a recruitment venue.