November 29, 2016

112916nursingtownhallflyer350The countdown clock is ticking! In less than one week, Texas Children’s Nursing will host its second virtual town hall on Wednesday, December 7, from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Pavilion for Women Conference Center.

Nursing has partnered with the Corporate Communication team to organize this event to engage our team of more than 3,000 dedicated nurses that make up Texas Children’s largest employee population.

During the first virtual town hall in June, approximately 600+ nurses participated via live attendance, group viewing of the livestream or watching the livestream via their smartphone, tablet or personal computer. Building on the tremendous success and impressive turnout of the first town hall, the goal this time around is to increase nursing participation significantly through a series of strategic marketing efforts.

“To help our nurses register early for the town hall, we created an electronic flyer with a registration link that was disseminated to nursing leadership via Nursing Congress and which is now available on our Voice of Nursing website,” said Jody Childs, senior project manager and co-organizer of the town hall event. “We helped nurses register as they arrived to their council meetings on Shared Governance Day which resulted in 65 nurses being registered for the town hall, all of whom received registration stickers to remind their peers to sign up as well.”

As a result of feedback from our first town hall, seating capacity has been expanded at the Pavilion for Women Conference Center and nurses are encouraged to attend the face-to-face town hall. For nurses who cannot attend the live event, there will be several gathering locations to view the live stream:

  • Clinical Care Center (for Ambulatory Services) – D.0900.30, ninth floor
  • West Campus – WC.150.10 (first floor)
  • The Woodlands Outpatient Facility (board room, fourth floor)
  • Health Centers – Sugar Land, Cy-Fair, The Woodlands, Kingwood, Clear Lake)
  • The Center for Children and Women (Greenspoint and Southwest)
  • Forming your own huddles? Please submit sign-in sheet to jcchilds@texaschildrens.org.

As always, patient care is our first priority and we know that not all nurses will be able to attend the live event or live-stream. However, those nurses will still be able to participate by viewing the event on-demand at their convenience.

Hosted by Chief Nursing Officer Mary Jo André, the town hall will include a discussion of FY16 nursing accomplishments, FY17 nursing priorities and system updates. Two videos will be presented – a sneak peek of Texas Children’s The Woodlands Hospital which will open spring of 2017 and a time lapse video spotlighting the progress on the pediatric tower which will open in August 2018. Also, the town hall will include extra Q & A time for nurses to submit their questions. Nurses watching the livestream remotely will be able to participate in this session thanks to our use of virtual technology.

“By leveraging new technology at our first town hall, we were able to engage more nurses in a town hall than we ever had before,” André said. “As our team continues to grow, it will be increasingly important for us to see opportunities to make communication easier and more effective. I encourage our nurses to pre-register so they can attend my town hall on December 7.”

Click here to pre-register for the Nursing Town Hall.

October 18, 2016

101916patientsafetyinside640Texas Children’s was recently named October 2016 Hospital of the Month by Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) in recognition of our outstanding achievements in cultivating an environment of safe patient care.

The SPS is a network of more than 80 children’s hospitals across the U.S. that share a common vision that no child will ever experience serious harm while we are trying to heal them.

“At Texas Children’s, we care for some of the country’s most critically ill patients, and we understand safe, quality care for every patient is the most important responsibility of each staff member and employee here,” said Texas Children’s Chief Safety Officer Dr. Joan Shook. “Ensuring our staff and employees are equipped with the knowledge and tools to take preventive action are key to keeping our patients safe.”

Through our organization-wide error prevention training program implemented in 2014, employees and staff are now more comfortable in applying proven safety behaviors in their everyday work to ensure error prevention alertness and personal accountability are always top of mind. These safety behaviors include effectively communicating concerns requiring action, supporting a questioning attitude and using three-way communication to achieve greater clarity so that everyone speaks a common language in the delivery of patient care.

To propel error prevention training to the next level, Texas Children’s launched the Safety Coach Program which consists of clinical and nonclinical frontline staff and providers who are trained to observe employee interactions and provide feedback to reinforce safety behaviors and skills taught in error prevention training.

“Since the program’s launch in February of last year, we’ve had 16 classes and trained 334 coaches throughout the organization,” said Texas Children’s Patient Safety Specialist Tiffany Wrenn. “Our program has contributed to people’s’ increased comfort level in speaking up when there is a concern resulting in a 5.2 percent significant improvement in communication openness as reported in our latest AHRQ Hospital Patient Safety Culture Survey.”

The SPS also recognized Texas Children’s systemwide efforts in reducing hospital acquired conditions by reassessing current practices to identify areas of improvement.

When patients in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) developed a hospital acquired pressure ulcer (HAPU) due to skin breakdown from the electrodes affixed to their scalp and forehead during an electroencephalography (EEG) study, Texas Children’s Clinical Specialist Joellan Mullen and her EMU colleagues collaborated to develop techniques to enhance skin care management and HAPU prevention, which were later published in the 2014 Journal of Pediatric Nursing.

These best practices included using a less abrasive solution to remove oils from the skin before electrodes were placed on the forehead, wrapping a breathable fishnet dressing around the electrodes to prevent moisture and pressure buildup on the scalp and implementing wireless technology to allow greater mobility for EMU patients.

“Before revising our quality improvement practices for HAPU prevention, 10 percent of our EMU patients developed a HAPU, averaging three or four occurrences per month,” Mullen said. “Today, we have seen a reduction in HAPUs within our unit after implementing these changes.” The creation of the Skin Champions Program also helped staff reduce the number of pressure ulcers in the EMU and in high acuity areas of the hospital like the intensive care and cardiovascular units.

Other units experienced their share of collaborative successes. To reduce the occurrence of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) in the neonatal intensive care unit, clinical specialist teams collaborated with infection control partners to review current policies and practices against national standards which led to the creation of a massive educational initiative for nurses. More than 2,000 nurses across the organization were trained on several key skills in central line care.

“We went through hand hygiene, cap changes, dressing changes, just accessing the central line, since we are doing all of that differently than we used to,” said Nicole Sheets, a nurse in the Pulmonary Adolescent Unit. “No matter where you are in the hospital, the standard of care is now the same across the entire organization.”

To learn more about Solutions for Patient Safety, click here. To read more about our patient safety achievements, click here.

September 27, 2016

View a testimonial from PICU Staff Nurse Jenny Tcharmtchi about what it’s like to work at Texas Children’s.

August 23, 2016

82416FinegoldScholarship640Dr. Milton Finegold (center), chief emeritus, Department of Texas Children’s Pathology, congratulates Finegold Award recipients Marie Elaine Williams, (from left), daughter of Leslie Williams, Pavilion for Women, third floor; Tahlaya Hardin, daughter of Shelly Amos, Pediatric Radiology; Skylar McHenry, daughter of Dawn McHenry, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; and Claire Eaves, daughter of Jennifer Eaves, Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit.

Finegold established the scholarship in 1980 in memory of his wife, Joan, a nurse, to help the children of Texas Children’s registered nurses fulfill their educational goals. The applicant (registered nurse) must be an employee of Texas Children’s for a minimum of two years on or before May 1 of the year of application. Since the first scholarship was awarded in 1985, 90 children have benefited from the Joan M. Finegold Scholarship.

August 9, 2016

81016nursingday640Texas Children’s Nursing Professional Development and Education Council hosted the 2016 Nursing Professional Day at the Pavilion for Women Conference Center on July 14 and 15. The purpose of the event was to enhance the knowledge of Texas Children’s registered nurses in an effort to improve professional practice and patient outcomes. The Nursing Professional Day agenda was driven from the results of the Annual Learning Needs Assessment.

Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer Mary Jo Andre, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, kicked off the event with opening remarks on the value of lifelong learning and its impact on patients and nurses. To support the value of education, the event was broadcasted via telehealth to eight different sites in an effort to reach all Texas Children’s nurses.

Nursing Professional Day provided the opportunity for nurses at all levels to participate either on the planning committee, as podium or poster presenter, facilitator of a skill station or educate at an exhibit table. Twenty of the topics presented offered continuing nursing education hours.

More than three hundred nurses in attendance had the opportunity to collaborate with 15 nursing schools as they look to advance their education. Twenty-five internal exhibitors were available for the nurses to learn about obtaining their certification, joining a professional organization and how other department’s value and support the nursing role.

The presentations are available to view on the Nursing Professional Development team site. Nursing Professional Day will be held at Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus on Tuesday, September 13. Encourage your nursing colleagues to attend.

81016smithvisit640On July 11, Executive Commissioner Charles Smith of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC) met with executive leaders at Texas Children’s Hospital and toured several areas of the hospital’s medical center campus to learn more about how we strive to provide the best care to women and children in the Greater Houston community and throughout Texas.

In his new role as THHSC executive commissioner, Smith will oversee the operation of the state’s 58,000 employees across four health care agencies, including the Medicaid/CHIP division and many health care services that impact the care that children and women receive at Texas Children’s.

Dr. Mark Shen, who serves as the chairman of the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas board and is president of Dell Children’s Medical Center, along with Stacy Wilson, president of the Children’s Hospital Association of Texas, also joined the visit and highlighted the collaboration that occurs among all freestanding children’s hospitals in Texas.

Chief of Neonatology Dr. Gautham Suresh, Vice President of Nursing Judy Swanson and NICU Nursing Director Heather Cherry toured the group through the Level IV NICU where they met with several patient families and heard their touching stories. As the state of Texas undergoes its process to designate NICU levels of care, the tour allowed our subject matter experts to educate the commissioner regarding the extensive differences between a Level 1 and Level 4 NICU.

The group also met with Dr. Christian Niedzwecki, medical director of the inpatient rehabilitation unit, and Shelley Ellison, director of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. During their tour of Texas Children’s Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the group discussed the concerns shared by physicians and patient families regarding Medicaid therapy rate cuts, which will impact this service line and the care provided to Texas Children’s patients with rehabilitation needs following a physical injury or medical condition.

July 19, 2016

72016jrreporters640A team of nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists from Texas Children’s Hospital’s Main Operating Room recently participated in a medical mission in Antigua, Guatemala.

The mission was coordinated by Faith in Practice, a Houston-based organization dedicated to the medical care of indigent people in Guatemala. The 44-member team that went consisted of medical and surgical staff from hospitals in the Medical Center and out of state. Among the volunteers from Texas Children’s were Drs. Olutoyin Olutoye, Oluyinka Olutoye, Robert Power, David Mann and Stephanie Cruz; certified registered nurse anesthetists Nate Jones and Megan Koudelka; and registered nurses Karen Bustos, Debra Batiste and Juan Sale.

Focusing primarily on pediatric patients, the team performed nearly 140 surgeries in just four days, including inguinal and umbilical hernias, orthopedic surgeries, podiatric cases, and dental extractions conducted in support of the people of Antigua.

“It is always a humbling experience to go on this mission trip,” said Bustos, who has been on the mission five times now. “These people come from villages eight to 10 hours away and come to us full of trust that we will make their children well.”

Sale, a first-time volunteer, said the trip was “an amazing experience, especially when you get to help the children.”

Glass, the group coordinator for Texas Children’s, said she has been participating in similar mission trips since 2002 and has gone to Guatemala 15 times.

“This activity is open to all surgeons, operating room nurses, anesthesia staff, recovery room nurses, and especially bilingual people,” Glass said, adding that financial donations will help support the mission as well as donation of unused OR supplies.

According to the organization’s website, Guatemala is considered extremely impoverished in comparison to other South American countries. Half of Guatemala’s 14 million people live in poverty, which is defined as living on less than $2 per day. In addition, the vast majority of Guatemalans have virtually no access to public health care.

In spite of these deficiencies, The Faith in Practice organization has made a significant impact on the people of Guatemala. In 2015 alone, 1,200 US volunteers travelled to Guatemala to participate in the mission activities coordinated by Faith in Practice. As a result, a total of 2,400 surgical procedures were performed and 25,000 Guatemalan patients were seen by the medical mission teams. Texas Children’s Hospital is extremely proud of this team and their selfless dedication to service.