If you’re like me, you’ve got one question on your mind right now — how can it be December already?!?!?
This year seems to have flown by faster than others, and I think one of the reasons is that we’re so excited about opportunities to see each other again. It was SO wonderful to see almost 100 UAMS nurses in person and another 175 online at our 2022 State of Nursing on Nov. 16. I’m grateful for the presenters who shared their team’s work and look forward to seeing all the initiatives they talked about come to fruition. Click here to see a video of the entire event.
For those of you who were not able to attend, I’d like to share a condensed version of my remarks. We are in an exciting transitional and transformative phase of healthcare that calls for the art – and the passion — of nursing. If we are going to retain the seasoned professionals who are so essential to training and mentoring our new staff, helping our residents fulfill their potential and using their years of clinical knowledge and expertise to care for our patients, we must change the work environment to ensure it’s safer, more rewarding and less stressful. We must also provide flexibility for improved work-life balance.
The issues are complex, and we’ll have to use multiple strategies to make lasting impact. One of these initiatives is the hiring of more LPNs. We’ve had a very successful role for LPNs in our outpatient clinics for many years, and we’re now recruiting and hiring LPNs to work alongside our inpatient RNs.
Another part of our improvement work is our nationally accredited transition to practice program. We hired 90 new graduate RNs last year, and our goal is to hire even more in the coming years. It’s critical that we have a formal, systematic, evidence-based curriculum that allows for a smooth transition from student to nursing professional.
We recently began a remote patient video monitoring program that allows monitor techs to keep an eye on up to nine patients at a time and warn nursing staff about potential falls and issues with IVs and feeding tubes. We are looking at using these same video devices for virtual nursing as well. This will allow a remote nurse to talk with a patient via video to take care of routine tasks such as intake assessments.
Additionally, as part of a joint venture with Amedisys and Contessa, we will soon be offering UAMS Health Comprehensive Care at Home, which combines all the elements of primary, hospital or rehabilitation-level care in the patient’s own home. UAMS Health Home Health went live yesterday, bringing our patients access to our own high-quality health services to their home in 12 Central Arkansas counties. We will offer recovery care at home, rehab care at home, and palliative care at home, beginning in a phased approach around March 2023. I am honored to serve as an executive lead for this organization-wide project along with Harrison Reed and Dr. Ahmed Abuabdou. Please reach out to us if you have any questions.
We know many of you are struggling, resources are tight, your area is short-staffed, and you’ve been working hard for long hours at a time for many months now. We recognize this and appreciate all that you are doing. Please know we are working to make things better – both for today and for the next generation of nurses.
This means that you’ll likely have to learn new things and do some things differently, but please know that our ultimate goal is to make your work – and your life – better. Nurses are truly the heart of UAMS, and so many people depend on UAMS.
I hope you’ll take an opportunity to look around with fresh eyes and use the “art” of nursing to search for ways to improve nursing at UAMS. It can be as simple as automating a task in EPIC to eliminate one click per patient. Your idea might be researching new products to solve a problem you encounter frequently, or you might think of ways to improve collaboration with other departments. Whatever you come up with, please share with your manager, and we’ll see if it’s something that can be shared with other units or departments.
I’m honored to work alongside you as we work to transform UAMS nursing. Next year will be a defining time for nursing at UAMS as we make great strides on our Magnet journey and implement a host of new initiatives. In the meantime, enjoy the holiday season with your friends and family. I hope to see you at the UAMS Holiday Celebration on Wednesday the 14th. Click here for more information about events statewide.
Trenda