July/August 2008, Issue 17


Still Time to Register for Calgary

Register Now!

Still Time to Register for Calgary
Action Plan Update: Memorial Regional Hospital, Hollywood, Florida
Emory Healthcare Implements Nursing Change of Shift Report at the Bedside
The 4th International Conference on Patient- and Family-Centered Care Call for Papers Deadline: September 28, 2008
The American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation on Patient-Centered Care
Institute for
Family-Centered Care
7900 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 405
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
P: 301 652-0281
F: 301 652-0186
E: institute@iffcc.org
W:  www.familycenteredcare.org
Still Time to Register for Calgary

If you missed the deadline for the early bird registration for the Hospitals and Communities Moving Forward with Patient- and Family-Centered Care Seminar to be held in Calgary, Canada, October 27-30, 2008, it doesn't mean that you have to miss the Seminar or the associated Special Opportunities. You can still register using our easy online registration.

If you register now, you are still entitled to receive a 10% discount on Institute publications, through September 30, 2008. Just log on to our Resources page and enter the discount code: calgarybrochure.

This is an intensive training Seminar, which includes many working meals. Registration fees for this seminar include continental breakfasts, working lunches, networking dinners, and a comprehensive resource notebook, with accompanying CD-ROM.  And when you are not eating, working, or networking you can join your colleagues in a number of optional planned events.

Check out the in-depth Seminar Agenda and then decide which of these optional activities will be the perfect match to an action packed seminar:

Alberta Children's Hospital Tour
The new Alberta Children’s Hospital opened in Calgary, Alberta, in September 2006, becoming the first free-standing pediatric facility to be built in Canada in more than 20 years. The people who use the building the most—patients, families, physicians, and staff—designed the hospital. In 2002, architects created renderings of how the hospital could look. The hospital’s Teen Advisory Group changed these drawings beyond recognition into a colorful, child friendly building resembling toy building blocks. Sign up for the tour and experience the highlights of this patient- and family-centered environment.

Symons Valley Ranch
Tuesday, October 28 promises to be an authentic western dining and entertainment experience! Enjoy one of Calgary’s best-known barbecue cuisines where Symons combines true western hospitality with a rustic environment. This evening will exceed your expectations with unexpected surprises.

Jubilations Dinner Theatre's featured show, Grey’s House of Anatomy, is set in Calgary. Two of television's top medical dramas rolled into one evening filled with classic rock tunes of the seventies.

And last, but certainly, not least, escape to the beautiful, pristine natural beauty of Banff and Lake Louise. Visit Banff National Park in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Ride to the top of Sulphur Mountain in the gondola and experience a bird’s eye view of the six mountain ranges, the very best vantage point in the west at an elevation of 7,486 feet.

For complete details of all Seminar sessions and topics, see our Seminar Agenda.

Action Plan Update: Memorial Regional Hospital, Hollywood, Florida

The Patient and Family Resource Center at the Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida opened on August 11, 2008. The Center was the dream of the Memorial Regional Hospital’s Patient and Family Advisory Council—the Council envisioned the Center, proposed it, secured funding, and made it happen.

The Patient and Family Resource Center features three computer work stations, photocopier, fax machine, and printer as well as a family lounge area. Specially trained volunteers staff the new center; they help patients or family members sign on to the computer to access bookmarked health information websites, create their own confidential webpage to keep family and friends updated, locate resources such as support groups and community services, as well as find hotels and restaurants.

According to Susan Montgomery, Director, Patient- and Family-Centered Care Services, the Center is analogous to a hotel business resource center and concierge function. The Center is seeing “between 25-35 family members and patients each day, most of whom are making a beeline for the computers to do their email, pay bills, research medical conditions, and so on. It has been an amazing experience.”

“Based on our personal experiences as family members and patients, we recognized the need for a ‘one-stop’ center within the hospital,” explained Jennifer Davis, Chairperson of the Memorial Regional Hospital Patient/Family Advisory Council. The Center makes it possible for family members to stay in touch with others about their loved one’s condition, complete important business while in the hospital, and make copies or send a fax. According to Jennifer, “access to these resources means that overwhelmed family caregivers will have a few less things to worry about during a loved one's hospitalization. That allows all of us to concentrate on the process of healing.”

Montgomery glows, “I have a wealth of stories already—the NICU parents whose baby began to improve so they came in to shop online for cribs; or the daughter who was here for 36 straight hours with her terminally ill mother, and rushed in because she needed to fax a resume by a deadline; or a newly diagnosed cancer patient who needed to jump start his list of “ask the doctor” questions; and the patient who simply said “I’ve been here for 15 days and I’m ‘jonesing’ for my email.”
 
"We've learned a lot and are happy to share the lessons.” Contact Susan Montgomery at smontgomery@mhs.net.

Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, another hospital in the Memorial Health System, also has a Resource Center. Read more

Emory Healthcare Implements Nursing Change of Shift Report at the Bedside

Patient- and family-centered care as an approach to care at Emory Healthcare is new. Designing the physical environment of the Neurointensive Care Unit was Emory’s first significant application of patient- and family-centered care concepts and strategies. When Emory administrators decided to expand the busy neuro ICU, a team of nurses, neurologists, pharmacists, social workers, design experts, and family members of former patients came together to figure out how to move caregivers back to the bedside. The team set about to design a unit “where the family and the patient are not objects of treatment but are full participants in the whole healing process.”

However, designing a new building is just one of the steps of integrating patient- and family-centered care concepts into policies, practices, and programs. In March 2008, nurses demonstrated their commitment to patient- and family-centered practice by altering the way change of shift report is conducted. And patient satisfaction data already shows improvement.

Conducting change of shift report at the bedside has had a positive impact in terms of truly involving the patient and family as partners in the care. On a shift-to-shift, day-to-day basis, patient- and family-centered care has come alive for nursing staff and they are seeing the true value in this approach to care.

Susan Grant, Emory’s Chief Nursing Officer, wrote to the Institute to say, “I am happy to let you know that we have 100% implementation of bedside change of shift report across Emory Healthcare!!  Our last few units just went live!  This has been such an incredible experience and the nursing staff are really buying into it.” Approximately 1800 nurses are participating. This change in nursing practice has been implemented across 4 hospitals, 73 inpatient units on every shift, including the night shift.

Patients and families are sharing their observations as part of shift report with the nurses and they confirm that they feel more knowledgeable about their care than they ever have.  

“Having family members in a unit 24/7 changes clinical practices, challenging the old way of doing things,” says Grant. “It is not a small thing. The adjustment can take some time.”

“I think it’s a mistake to view families as yet another sort of checklist for the doctors and the nurses to take care of, Owen Samuels, Medical Director of the Division of Neurointensive Care says. Medicine in general has neglected the powerful and important role that families and patients can play in the healing process.”

Both Grant and Samuels believe that by trying to establish a new standard for providing care for critically ill patients and their families, they are all pushing the envelope. Creating a new culture doesn’t have a beginning and an end: it’s a process, and an extremely challenging one at that. The lessons learned at the neuro ICU will help shape the form that future intensive care units in the proposed new Emory Hospital complex will take.

But just as patient- and family-centered care, along with new technology and better-designed physical space, improves outcomes, so does the evolution of nursing practice. Emory Healthcare has already identified 20 patient and family advisors, instituted a “shared decision making” structure across its system to include input from workers at all levels as well as from patients and their families; nurses are engaged in “unit practice councils” that identify practices that could be improved and then determine how to make that happen.

These actions are the beginning steps necessary to ensure that Emory Healthcare will successfully achieve one of its strategic goals: “Become nationally recognized for transforming health and healing through developing and implementing innovative patient- and family-centered care, research, and teaching models.”


The 4th International Conference on Patient- and Family-Centered Care Call for Papers Deadline: September 28, 2008

The 4th International Conference on Patient- and Family-Centered Care to be held in Philadelphia, PA, August 17-19, 2009, will showcase innovative health care programs that are committed to patient- and family-centered care and meaningful collaboration with patients and families. The three-day conference will feature formal and informal meetings, including plenary sessions, concurrent and topical breakout sessions, networking discussions, a video theatre, and poster presentations.

One of the highlights of The 3rd International Conference held in Seattle, WA, was the well-attended video theatre. We hope you will consider submitting your organization's patient- and family-centered informational and educational videos, as well as any orientation and training material that highlight patient- and family-centered best practices.

Abstracts will be accepted for presentations, videos, and posters. The Institute strongly encourages creative and innovative ways of presenting material. Read more about submitting an abstract or becoming an exhibitor.

All abstracts must be submitted online by September 28, 2008.

The American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation on Patient-Centered Care

In 1999, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) established the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation which seeks to advance medical professionalism and physician leadership in quality assessment and improvement. The 2008 ABIM Foundation's Invitational Summer Forum, “From Rhetoric to Reality: Achieving Patient-Centered Care” was designed to promote dialogue and decision-making among health care leaders to address barriers to, and innovations in, achieving patient-centered care.

Goals of the 2008 forum included:

• Developing a consensus on the meaning and definition of patient-centered care, including the role of patients and families;

• Identifying affordable and sustainable systems needed to support patient-centered care;

• Recommending how practices and training sites can embrace and adopt the principles of patient-centered care to improve care, particularly for the underserved and disadvantaged populations; and

• Identifying how organizations can advance patient-centered care.

Bev Johnson, President and CEO of the Institute for Family-Centered Care, was among the health care leaders invited to participate. The Foundation also invited eight patient and family advisors to share both their real-life care experiences as patients and family members of patients as well as their insights about how to improve our health care system. Five of these patient and family advisors—Mollee Atkinson, Win Hodges, Greg Lipsky, Margaret Murphy, Karen Tate—also have presented at meetings convened by the Institute for Family-Centered Care. The presence and participation of patient and family advisors and leaders provided a compelling context for the issues discussed.

Don Berwick, MD, President & CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, delivered The Kimball Lecture, What “Patient-Centered” Should Mean: Confessions of an Extremist. Don listed the following as examples of Patient- and Family-Centered Care:
 
• No restrictions on visiting;

• Patients determine food and dress;

• Patients and family members participate in rounds;

• Patients and families participate in design of health care processes and services;

• Medical records belong to patients;

• Shared decision-making technologies;

• Schedules conform to ideal queuing theory; and

• Patients have self-care option.

Read More about this Hot Topic







Share your innovative patient- and family-centered programs with others across the country and beyond!

 Submit an abstract for

The 4th International Conference
on Patient- and Family-Centered Care
,
to be held in
Philadelphia, PA
August 17-19, 2009

All abstracts must be
submitted online by
 September 28, 2008

Read more about the
Call for Papers