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Welcome to All About Nursing with your host, Dr. Joyce Batchelor. Executive nurse advisor, Dr. Batchelor, will present the significant role nurses play in providing healthcare in a multitude of healthcare settings.
Listen to some of today's key nurses who work and practice in academia settings and talk about the challenges they face in today's modern medical world. So please welcome the host of All About Nursing, Dr. Joyce Batchelor. Good evening.
I'm your host, Dr. Joyce Batchelor, and all about nursing. And we're live on the BBM Global Network in Tune & Radio. And this evening I have a guest with me, and I'd like to tell you a bit about her.
This is Dr. Cindy Sayer. She is currently the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center. Throughout her 35-year nursing career, she has worked in a variety of clinical settings, including oncology and critical care.
She joined the University of Washington Medical Center in 2000, and she served in a variety of roles that include staff development specialist, a clinical nurse specialist, a director of professional practice, and magnet program director, part of being promoted to the Chief Nursing Officer in 2017. She received her bachelor's, master's, and PhD from the University of Washington. With a deep passion for mentorship and teaching, Cindy leads from the heart and promotes educational advancement and exemplary clinical practice at all levels. As an administrator and a leader, Cindy works to ensure staff empowerment and environments of clinical inquiry and a culture of patient and family-centered healthcare for the benefit of all.
So delightful to have you this evening, Cindy. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. So let's start off with you just telling the audience a little bit about when and how you decided to become a nurse. Yeah, so when I was growing up, I really always thought I would be a teacher.
I held a lot of classrooms in my backyard with stuffed animals and was very enamored with that profession. And then when I was 18 years old, my mom had an MI and was in the critical care unit of a hospital. And that was really my first exposure to seeing a nurse in action. And when we got to the hospital, of course, we were so afraid for my mom and I was just 18 at the time.
So the nurse told us that we could call at any time during the night because she was going to be with my mom all night. And this is back before visitors or family could spend the night. And when she said that, it just lifted this burden off of all of us. We knew that if we woke up scared for my mom, we could just give her a call.
So that was a big impression on me. And then I also had another experience when I was in community college. I took a first aid class. I think I just needed some credit.
And in this first aid class was a nurse. And of course, she knew all the answers to all of the questions and could perform all of the procedures at first aid perfectly. And I was really enamored with that. I thought, wow, that is so impressive.
And so at my young age of about 19, I just decided, okay, I think I'm going to be a nurse. Well, that's wonderful. So maybe you could share now just a few of your highlights of your career because you've done so many different roles. And I know you're at an amazing organization.
So that would be great. Yeah, there's so many highlights. I have really never looked back and regretted being a nurse at all. And some of those highlights, I think that to my days when I was delivering direct patient care.
And I loved that. I loved being with patients. I started out as an oncology nurse at the City of Hope in California and also worked with patients that were undergoing bone marrow transplant appearance in Seattle. And I think that that's a very intimate space for a nurse to be in if people are grappling with end of life, types of care, and for those patients that survive, the treatments can be really harrowing.
So I found a lot of meaning and joy in those roles being able to help patients. I went then to a newly opened for bed ICU, which is just almost adorable to think about for bed. Yeah, and it was brand new. And I was training to be a critical care nurse.
And we really were in a very small community hospital. And I remember that the first patient that we took care of that was so sick and had all the lines and the pressures. And we were just so worried about her. I'll never forget that she opened her eyes on New Year's Day.
Her family had asked us to put the game on, the Rose Bowl, so that she could listen to it. And I think we were talking to her and saying, oh, I think your team is going to win. And her eyes just opened. And that's that moment as a nurse when you can see the outcomes of your care for somebody.
I'll never forget that moment. And then when I was in that hospital, in a small hospital, I decided that I would study to become certified. And I worked hard at that. And I took a test.
And this is back in the day before you got instant results. I knew I had failed. But I was happily surprised when I got the letter that I had passed. And it really just changed things for me.
And I asked myself the question, you know, what if I'm smart? What if I can do more than I thought that I could? So with that kind of a springboard, I went on to finish my bachelor's degree because I actually have a diploma in nursing from LA County Medical Center School of Nursing, circa 1984. I went back to God of Bachelors and then my master's degree and then completed my PhD about five years ago.
And just a couple of other things to mention. So when I was working as a clinical nurse specialist, I was able to do a lot of patient and nursing education. I have a specialty in management of diabetes, especially for hospitalised patients. So I did a lot of education, which brought me back full circle to be the teacher.
And I loved that. And then finally, well, two other things I'll say. When I was a director for professional practice, it was just awesome to watch nurses and still to this day really engage with clinical inquiry and evidence-based practice and watching them just blossom as they realize how smart they are and what a big difference they can make. That's wonderful.
As you were talking, I was thinking, you know, I have some similarities. I also went to a diploma program originally. And I also have a background in critical care. And I also started on on a college unit.
So that's pretty interesting. So for the audience, I think when we chuckled about a four-bit ICU, I mean, if you think about what we've heard during this pandemic, we've had I've had a nursing officer friends that have said, well, I'm opening up 90 more critical care beds. And so when you look at four, that's kind of a dream come true. You can really do a lot of wonderful in-depth care with your patients with fours.
So that's awesome. So I was just curious, you know, the certification and diabetes, are you still able to integrate that into some of the work you're doing? Have you tried to keep some clinical practice on the side with your chief nursing officer role? That's such a good question.
And unfortunately, no. So when I got my master's degree, I actually trained to be a nurse practitioner. And when I was a clinical nurse specialist, I was practicing as an advanced practice provider with patients that had diabetes. And I held on to that piece of my practice for a very long time.
And it just came to a point where I felt like I just had to choose between going more into administration or choosing more to clinical role. I will say I think that's some place that we need to do better in nursing, that we feel more forced to make those choices, where in the medical profession, they do both. So I do wish that would have been different. Yeah, no, that's awesome.
Thank you so much for sharing that. This is all about nursing. Dr. Joyce Bachelor, we're live on the PBM Global Network in Tune and Radio, and it's time for us to take a short break.
According to the American Nurses Association, there are approximately three and a half to four million nurses in the United States. So where do all these nurses work? What kind of roles do they have? What kind of education and training help to prepare them for so many different settings?
What kind of impact nurses have on patient outcomes? The World Health Organization has announced that 2020 will be the year of the nurse, honoring the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. An international initiative called Nursing Now is underway to raise the profile of nursing. The National Academy of Medicine has convened a committee to create the future of nursing 2020 to 2030, that will focus on how the nursing profession can create a culture of health, reduce health disparities, and improve the health and well-being of the U.S.
population. Learn more and join Joyce Bachelor on All About Nursing Wednesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Central Standard Time on the BBM Global Network. Do you ever wonder why certain things are happening in your life?
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Joyce Batchelor, the host of this show and I have with me this evening Dr. Sinti Sare, who is the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center. And before the break, Sinti was telling us about why she became a nurse and some highlights from her career that we're really very wonderful for you to share. Maybe we could switch and start to have you tell us a little bit about the fact that you're now in a Chief Nursing Officer role for the University of Washington Medical Center.
What are the major issues your new team are addressing? Yeah, this is such an interesting time to be asked that question because my answer tonight will be a lot different than it would have been even six months ago. But you know, along with every other hospital in the country, we're working to understand the impacts of this pandemic on nursing practice and just on care delivery in general. We are very focused here on patient and family center care and have been since 2000 when I arrived here.
And this has been really distressing for our staff and patients. That family involvement has been more limited back in a couple of months ago. We were limiting basically restricting visitors except in very extreme circumstances. And so one of the things we had to do is figure out how can nurses in a sense stand in for family and loved ones when they can't be there.
I've seen just beautiful examples of our nurses going that extra mile for patients. And one of the things I keep hearing in the media about patients dying alone and I can tell you that in our medical center that they're not dying alone. The nurses are in there with those patients and standing in. And one issue that we're working on is how can we help these patients when they can't have their loved ones there.
The other thing I would say is I've never before appreciated or accessed critical supplies like I have in the last few months. And in the beginning, I think every hospital was faced with just an unthinkable situation where you might not have everything you would need to protect a staff member caring for a patient. We worked together to overcome a lot of those barriers. One example is that we actually saw theft of critical supplies in the very early days of the pandemic.
And so we had to gather up all of the hand gels that we had on all of the units and put it back out under lock and key basically to make sure that we were going to have enough supplies to get through the time that we needed to. And we have been successful and we are in a much better situation now than we were in March. But that's been a major issue for us. And then again, like every medical center, we're facing out with enormous budget shortfall for our next fiscal year.
When we were in the thick of it with COVID, we weren't thinking much about the money. To be honest, we were very focused on clinical care, making sure we had all of the staff that we needed and like many hospitals, spending a lot of money on supplies. And now it's time for us to close our budget for the next fiscal year. And for years, we've been trimming budgets for years.
But now we're in a situation where we have to review every single program and say, is this something that we can afford? Not is this nice to have, but can we afford this? And do we absolutely have to have it? And so I think this is one of our challenges.
And as a magnet hospital, nurse engagement and our shared governance programs are very important. I've had to limit the project time and even so have our shared governance meeting time in order to just make sure that we can keep the lights on and continue to care for patients. So all of that being said, we tell each other here, we never let a good crisis go to waste. And so although this has been extremely challenging on many fronts, it's given us a chance and it's basically forced us to reevaluate care delivery, which is the way that we are getting the work done and pushing us to identify opportunities for improvement.
So are you starting to see your elective surgeries coming back or are people still very hesitant to come into the hospital? Yes, so we actually have the Courtenery Care Center. We were postponing urgent surgeries as well. So the first group to come back were patients that needed urgent surgeries.
We had, for example, a lot of neurosurgery cases that were deferred for a time. And even some cancer surgery cases that were deferred that are now coming back. I think this week we are approaching our normal surgery volumes. And then that being said, we definitely are hearing from patients that they don't want to come in for elective care because they're worried about the infection.
And we still have a one visitor policy here and that's causing some people to defer care because they want more family members to be with them. So we're not back to our pre-COVID state, but our surgical volumes are definitely starting to pick up. Yeah, that's great because I'm still hearing from a lot of other people that they're still seeing a lot of hesitation and people are also unemployed and don't have health insurance. So they're really not wanting to come in to have a surgery done unless it's absolutely essential.
Being a magnet hospital, I know that you've got stellar outcomes. I was just curious if there's specific outcomes that you're really trying to improve upon that you'd like to share. Sure. Yeah, so we have four pillars.
I think the pillar, a format for quality improvement is familiar to many people. The first part of the pillar is really a focus on the patient and the family. And we spent a lot of time on this pillar making sure that we were understanding patient experience. And I will say that through, I was worried about this during the pandemic with the visit restrictions and with everybody being very stressed out, but we've been able to maintain our patient satisfaction scores.
That's great. Yeah, I know. I was very nervous to open that dashboard up, but so far so good. We focus on quality and I would say for nurses in particular, we're focused on our systems of quality indicators like falls and pressure injuries.
And that's been interesting too. We saw some uptick with falls in our COVID unit because nurses weren't able to get in there as quickly to save that patient's fall. Okay. We're coming to your light in the Began Global Network and Tune in Radio.
This is all about nursing, Dr. Joyce Bachelor and we'll be right back. Attorney Renee Marie Smith is changing away. We sell real estate.
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And I just before the break, my guest, Cindy Sayer, who is the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center, was telling us about the three different pillars that she's been working on that have different outcomes that the nursing staff and organization overall are really trying to achieve. So you talked a little bit about the quality one, so maybe you could share a little bit about the other two. Yeah, so our third pillar is being an employer of choice. And this has never been more critical than right now, that we are the place that nurses and other staff members want to work.
And it's very important to all of us, the leaders here, that our staff feel supported. We measure our turnover rates in order to track the progress. And I will say that one of the things I love about being here is a very relational place to work. We have a hands-on approach for nursing leadership.
We do a lot of rounding. And I was going to say face-to-face time, but now it's a massed face-to-face time. To make sure that we really are listening to staff very carefully and working to make their jobs easier. And we hold town halls and things like that.
And then finally, we do have a finance pillar. And as I said earlier, our job right now is to figure out how we can deliver an excellent level of care in the most efficient way possible. And as our CFO will say sometimes, it's like no margin, no mission. We have to figure this out in order to be able to continue our mission.
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk a bit about how the nursing profession changed since you've become a nurse. What did you see?
Since 1984. So much change. I would say overall, though, when I graduated from nursing school, we were focused on tasks. And just doing those tasks for patients and checking the box, we were following orders from providers.
We really were not encouraged to think independently or critically, at least in the settings that I was working in back then. And actually, I remember that we had a nurse from another part of the country that was working with us. And she was challenging some physician orders. And some of the nurses, including me, were mocking her like, did she think she's a doctor?
So just, I think, the theme that nurses were held in has increased a lot since that time. I would also say, of course, the patients were easier. Patients now have more comorbidities and more chronic illnesses than when I started. And documentation, we didn't have electronic documentation.
So it was actually pretty simple to document. We had maybe three flow sheets that we had to write on, and then we were done. And then added up to more time with patients. And I would say, I would say for myself, I wasn't focused on patient experience per se, or even quality outcome in the aggregate.
Our nurses can tell you what the fall rate is on their units and how the patient satisfaction scores are for their units. And so, I was able to do that when I was first-inners. That wasn't even really encouraged at all. So, so, so, so many changes.
So what do you think are the key characteristics that nursing students need to really have when they're coming out into this profession today? Yeah. A couple things really come to mind. And I think the key characteristic of a successful nurse, and it's probably, this is probably true from 1984 to 2020 of compassion.
And I think that compassion is sometimes hard to hold on to when you are in situations of incredible stress. And so we need nurses that can maintain their humanity in the face of all kinds of stress. I think that is the number one thing. And then the other part of it, and this is maybe part of the compassion, is we need nurses that can treat each patient of whole beings, and not just a body and a bit, but really seeing the patient for who they are.
One example of how we try to do this here is in our ICUs, we have something called getting to know me posters. And for our patients that are intubated and maybe can't communicate, these posters are filled out by their family members. And they have what the patient's preferences are. They have pictures of the patient when they were well.
With their family members as a way to help staff see this as an entire human being and not just a list of diseased systems. I think those are the key things. We also need nurses that can think about, especially when I'm thinking right now, can understand what the social determinants of health are, and how we can advocate for system changes to make sure that the patients, all patients have access to health care, that people have access to things like healthy food and environment where they can get some exercise. I mean, all of those things, nurses in 2020 need to think very broadly, and think about policies that are in place that might be impacting health.
And then finally, I think some of the health disparities are really playing out in terms of the number of cases of in deaths with COVID-19, much higher in African American and Mexican American. So anyway, I think that the social determinants of how they're really getting up in our faces in terms of needing to be worked on. It's so important. And we have to be brave.
We really have to be brave and ask ourselves a question about are we treating patients differently based on their race? And it's almost a scary question to ask because we wouldn't want to believe that that was true. But I think this is a time when we need to ask those questions and really look at the data and make the changes that we need to make, for sure. The only other thing I would add to what so many things, characteristics of a nurse.
But one thing that I've seen in the last few months is we need nurses that are reflective and they can manage their stress with good self-care. I think that nurses who don't know how to practice self-care then become dysfunctional in a sense because they're so stressed out and angry and frustrated. And when I'm talking to nurses, I call it leaking, then that kind of leaks out of them. And it leaks out towards their coworkers.
It might leak out towards the patient. So I think the ability to manage our stress and practice good self-care is really important. Thank you for sharing that. And we'll talk a bit more about that in a bit.
We are coming to you live in the BVN Global Network in Tune & Radio. This is all about nursing. I'm Dr. Joyce Batch with the host of the show and we'll be right back.
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On the BBM Global Network, Susan and her guests will share techniques so you can facilitate your loved ones ability to safely follow your instructions, participate in daily activities, and express daily wants and desires to learn positive solutions, creative ideas, and practical strategies that will build a healthy foundation. You are listening to all about nursing live from the BBM Global Network in Tune and Radio. I'm Dr. Joyce Batchler, the host of the show, and I have Dr.
Cindy Cyr with me this evening. She currently is the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center. And before the break, you were telling us about the changes that you've seen, certainly in the profession of over time. And I thought it would be great to switch topics a little bit.
And have you talked a bit about what kind of mentors and who have you had as mentors that have helped you during your career? Well, I still appreciate the question because I think that any successful nurse has a mentor somewhere that's been rooting for them and giving them guidance. And so I'm really pleased to be able to talk about that. I will say that when I came to the University of Washington in 2000, the person who hired me, Lori Wild, who was eventually a piano here and now is a Dean at the Al Pacific University, was such a strong mentor for me.
I came, I had a lot of energy, I didn't have that much direction necessarily, or the ability to really focus my energies and attention to the degree that I would need to be successful. And so she really helped me channel a lot of that energy and get focused about some of the topics diabetes is actually one of those topics she helped me identify that as a passion and then to get out of way for me to practice. And all along, I just feel like she saw in me qualities that I couldn't identify myself, leadership qualities, gave me a lot of encouragement, asked me a lot about going back to school for my daughter. And I think I really credit, I remember having dinner with her one night and saying to her, I think I'm ready to go back and she said it was just a matter of time, what do I need to do to help you.
So she really put me on this path to become a CNO and just to have a greater spirit of influence. I've also had, that clinical nurse specialist that I worked with here many years ago, Joan Ching, was the one who gave me that term about spirit of influence and helped me to understand the idea of where do you want your spirit of influence to be. The nurse patient interfaces sacred and there's no doubt about that. And at the same time, what else could you do if you brought in your spirit of influence?
And so that's when I started really thinking about leadership and being able to change whole systems as one way to practice nursing. And then Grace Parker was our chief nursing officer here many years ago or several years ago, right before I was. And gave me just a ton of encouragement and opportunities to experience leadership, make some changes. And I learned a lot from just her calm demeanor.
So many mentors along the way, I'm incredibly grateful and I try to pay that forward as much as I possibly can. So the University of Washington Medical Center was the first hospital in the world to receive the designation of magnet as well as being the first to receive a sixth designation. In your view, what's the difference between working in a magnet and versus a non-magnet environment? Yeah, so we're really proud of our magnet status and all of the work that we've done to achieve that.
I have worked in non-magnet environments and I will say that they tend to be, and this is a broad brush that I'm painting. I know this isn't true for all of them, but they tend to be hierarchical. And there's less questioning of leaders and more of a command and control approach. I think the magnet approach uses the shared governance.
And when I think about that, the phrase that I like to use is nothing about me without me. Meaning that if we're making decisions about nursing practice, we better have clinical nurses at the table. And that really is their work to do. And so that's a big difference in terms of even how policies are determined, how practices are set is the involvement of nurses.
It's an empowerment model. And we're listening for phrases like when nurses will say, I'm just a nurse. We always will say, what do you mean you're just a nurse? Nurses are the best.
One example of this too is in our shared governance structure, we turned it upside down. And so instead of having the nurse executive counsel at the top, we have all of the clinical nurses at the top of the model. And the nurse executive committee is down below and supporting the clinical nurses as opposed to the other way around. And I tell nurses, and I believe that my job is to push resources to the nurses and to the patients.
So I think that's a major difference. And then there's just a sense of nursing autonomy. We expect our nurses to make critical thinking decisions and to not just follow orders blindly. And we always support them.
And even if we go on to coach them that another choice would have been better, they're supported in doing what they think is the right thing to do. And I do think that's a difference in a magnet model. Do you see a difference in how the physicians work with the nursing staff in a magnet versus a non-magnet facility? I do.
I really do. And again, it's kind of back to that hierarchical framework. In non-magnet hospitals that I've worked in, it is more of a physician when I say it's an order, it truly is an order. I would say there's a lot more dialogue in our clinical areas between providers and nurses.
Probably that does have to do with our teaching environment because we have residents, but also even our attendings. Nurses are very highly regarded here. And the attendings will seek out the opinions of the expert nurses when they're unsure of what to do. And I've also noted that in the clinician satisfaction surveys that we do every year, nursing practice is one of the most highly rated areas for our clinicians.
They really appreciate the nurses here. So, yeah, that's awesome. That's great. Can you give a couple of examples of ways in which the shared governance model has really advanced the patient care, your facility and nursing practice?
Yeah. So, one example, we have a nurse here named Chantel Dijkstra. She was orienting a nurse one day and the new nurse was having some problems with her patient load. I think the nurse was just newly independent, so she wasn't necessarily being oriented, but just a novice, brandy novice.
And Chantel just started thinking about, well, when we're making these assignments, we don't have an acuity system here at UW Medical Center. We're making these assignments where we might not be taking into account all of the factors of the patient that make the care heavier or lighter for any given patient. So, she sat down and on the back of an afkin, sketched out this idea for an intensity index. And with the support of our clinical nurse researcher, they ended up testing a model to see if they could quantify nursing workload for various areas.
Very successful. She published an article on this, and we adopted that intensity index. And it was used at the medical center for many years. So, just the fact that a clinical nurse can identify problems, come up with a solution, engage the resources that we have here, and make a difference is a really good example of our shared governance.
One other example I can share is our medical surgical unit, very high stress unit. There's a lot of patients that are very challenging on that unit. And they started getting interested, though unit practice counsel started being interested in meditation and mindfulness as a way to help them through the day. And put a plan together to take two minutes at the beginning of the day.
It's actually like an eight in the morning. They light an electric candle because it can't be flame. And they give them a light, and they sit in the report room. And this is open to people that want to participate.
It's not a mandatory thing. They sit in the report room and they go through a guided meditation for two minutes. And people come from all over the medical center, respiratory therapists, other people, to just be there. And they just found that to be a way to get grounded before they start their really busy day.
That's an awesome practice. Thank you so much for sharing that. This is all about nursing. I'm from host Dr.
Joyce Bachelore, live on the Vegan Global Network in Turnin' Radio, and it's time for us to take a short break. Mike Zorek, a three-time California state champion in Greco-Roman Wrestling at 114 pounds. Mike, blind, sits birth, was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a six-time national place, including two seconds, two-thirds and two-fourths.
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I'm Dr. Joyce Bachelore, the host of the show. And my guest this evening is Dr. Cindy Sierra, who is the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center.
And Cindy has the honor of being at the first magnet hospital that was ever designated in the world, and the only one that's a chief designation six times. So I know that you have a phenomenal model of patients at Family Center Care, and I thought maybe you could share a little bit more about what is it that you're doing to really help make sure that you've got really good patient family center care in your organization. Yeah, this is an area that we are really proud of, our work on patients and families under care. So many examples to share.
One of them is that we have six patients in Family Center Care Councils, and their population specific. So we have an ICU one, we have an acute care, a neonatal ICU, et cetera. And those councils work on issues that are meaningful for those advisors. And so the councils are made up of half patient and family advisors and half staff members.
And our leaders are joining those meetings as well. So a couple of examples. We built a tower a few years ago to house ICUs and beautiful tower. And the Patient Family Center Care Council was instrumental in helping us to design the rooms and make sure that not only were they going to be adequate for patient care, but that they were designed for patients, for family members, comfort.
So they have like a little day bed by the window. Some features like there's a place where you can walk your cell phone in case you want to go to the bathroom and you're worried about it being stolen. So they helped to go with the design, the colors and things like that of the ICU. So really meaningful work there.
Another great example is in our neonatal intensive care unit, there were some concerns by parents that the residents that were working in the NICU were, didn't always have the best, also if you turn bedside manner. And they would give information in very jarring ways to parents and they weren't necessarily tuning in to the emotions that these parents were having. And so this council requested to have time with every resident that comes into the NICU. There's two council members that will come in and give training to the residents and basically say this is what it feels like to be a parent of one of these children.
So when you tell me that you can't take my child off the ventilator, this is how I would like you to say that. And it's just been transformational in terms of the residents being able to hear from the parents what this might be like. In that resident training, the parents were very clear. They didn't want the attending physicians in there.
They wanted to have a very honest conversation with the residents. And I think that has been incredibly meaningful. And then just down to some mundane things like our acute care council helped us select the patient gowns that we moved to a couple of years ago. So we just tried to include them in all things that are meaningful to improve the experience here.
I think that's awesome that you're doing that with the residents. Do you get a good feedback from them about the impact it has for them to really hear from parents? Yes, we've had fantastic feedback. And I think most of the feedback is we had no idea.
They haven't walked in those shoes. And so I think it's been really meaningful for them. Especially when you're learning, it's easy to forget other people's perspectives. You're just trying to make sure you know your stuff.
And you're going to have the attending physician on you. And so being sensitive to that, that's wonderful that you're able to do that. So even the design and picking colors and all that, the patients and the families really had a good say and all that. They do.
And they're pushing us. Another example is we had wood doors outside of the intensive care unit. And we had signs out there saying you could come in for 10 minutes every two hours. Whatever the rule was.
I can't remember. And it was the advisors that said take those doors down. This is the scariest looking thing we've ever seen. And it doesn't have to be this way.
And so they worked with our design people on putting glass doors that you could see into. And then even just down to the font of how the unit is described. Yeah. That's great.
And you had to share earlier that you have awesome patient satisfaction scores. Are there other specific things that you're doing to really assure that you have really good feedback from your patients and families? Yeah. And this is where I can link it with the patient and family center care councils because we went to them many years ago.
And so when you're filling out one of these surveys and somebody asks you, did a nurse listen carefully to you, what are you thinking about? What would it look like if a nurse listen carefully? And they just gave us great information like, well, you would make eye contact. And nurses think that they're having an encounter with the patient when they run in and hang an IV and run back out.
We don't count that as an encounter. If you want that to be an encounter, you need to stop for one minute. Look us in the eye. Ask us how we're doing.
And they also told us, don't multitask. Don't try to talk while you're doing these other things. That makes me nervous. I want you to just take a minute and talk to me.
And so just the little gems that we got from them, we were able to pass on to staff and we really saw a big difference in our patients' satisfaction scores. So we're usually in the 90th percentile now for our nursing communication and our overall satisfaction. As you're describing that, I'm thinking about that's really the art of nursing. And I think we've kind of lost some of that over time, becoming so focused on the science of nursing.
And it's, you know what I mean? And you're diploma grad. So I think that you may relate to this too, because that was really drilled in in my program initially, was always making sure the patient knew who you were, why you're in the room, what you want to do, and that you made eye contact. You would touch their hand if you could.
And so I think we've lost some of that. So I'm happy to hear that you've been able to put that back in place. And it's come from the thesis. Yeah, I think we do.
Good job. I will say I got a letter just today where a patient described a situation where they didn't have a patient. And so it's definitely not, it's not 100%. We still have work to do.
Yeah, always. But you know, you're doing amazing. Phenomenal work. So thank you.
This is all about nursing. I'm your host, Dr. Joyce Bachelor, live on the Beacon Club at Mountain Stadium. We'll continue talking about this when we come back.
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What kind of roles do they have? What kind of education and training help to prepare them for so many different settings? What kind of impact nurses have on patient outcomes? The World Health Organization has announced that 2020 will be the year of the nurse, honoring the 200th Earth anniversary of Florence Nightingale.
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Central Standard Time on the BBM Global Network. I'm your host, Dr. Joyce Bachelor on All About Nursing and we're live on the BBM Global Network in Tune & Radio. And this evening, my guest is Dr.
Cynthia Seir, who is the Chief Nursing Officer at the University of Washington Medical Center. And you have been sharing just a wealth of information with us and so many things that your team must be so proud of. So I'd like to ask you, as you navigate the future in this very uncertain time, what is guiding your leadership decisions and actions? Yeah, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this and my goal and the question I ask myself is, how can I bring more love and care into this building?
And I mean that in the broadest sense, how can I bring more love to all of our staff and all of our patients? I've talked about this in different settings before. I think people are almost afraid to say the word love sometimes when it relates to work, to our work colleagues and to our patients. And as I've gotten older, I've decided I'm not afraid.
I'm not afraid of love. I use it every day to make sure that I'm making the difference that I'm supposed to make. And I think that our staff can feel that for me. And I've heard the phrase before, it's like keeping the main thing, the main thing.
There is so much noise in the environment and really trying to stay focused on the patient and making sure that we're doing what we need to do. I had actually heard a couple other colleagues just recently using the word love and I think it's very powerful. I used to love my staff. I love working with them, the things that they did on a daily basis.
I was very proud to be able to represent that work and talk about it in other places. And so I think you're onto something very, very important. You've shared a lot of great work that you and your team are doing in the fact that you've got nurses making a big difference and not afraid to raise their voices. I was just curious, is there anything else that you would want to share that you're just really proud of that you haven't had a chance to get?
Yeah, you know, I guess I just overall, I would just love to say to everybody. I'm so proud of the entire profession right now. I think this time has just brought nursing to the forefront. And if there's any group of individuals that are going to be able to lead the way out of this incredibly challenging times, it's going to be nurses.
I'm proud not just of the nurses in this building, but the nurses across the country and really across the world for their brave work, their courage in the face of chaos and fear. And I am really honored just to be a nurse. And the other thing I would like to say is don't give up. We need to stay strong all of us.
We need every single nurse to turn things around and to make sure that we're providing the very best care that we possibly can. So even when things are challenging, I'm hoping people will just stick with it. I think that's important as you were talking about the nurses coming out of school. And I know that there's challenges there because they haven't had as much clinical time.
They've been getting more simulation to kind of make up for that. Are you seeing that in your area as well? Yes, we are. We had to limit and basically restrict clinical rotations in our medical center.
One thing I can say is that we are ready to welcome new graduates into our building. We know what the limitations have been and we can overcome that. I think that we need new ideas. We need people to challenge the status quo.
And we can make up for the clinical time that's been lost. I think that's a powerful message for people that may be listening that are currently in school because I've been hearing that a lot from student nurses. They're afraid because they haven't had as much actual clinical time. And I've also said to them I didn't know a lot of stuff until I got practicing day to day.
So that's wonderful. And this is the year of the nurses in the midwife. I was just curious if you're celebrating that in any special way in your organization. You know, we're talking about it a lot.
I will say nurses week with a little bit of a downer here at the local center because we're used to doing big events. And so I think it's an opportunity for us to find new ways to celebrate the year of the nurse for sure. Well, I want to thank you so much for being on the show. You've done an amazing job telling us about your organization.
And I'm sure you are very proud of all the work your team is doing. So thank you again. You all have been listening to All About Nursing live in the Vegan Global Network and Tune in Radio. I'm Dr.
Joyce Bachelors of the show. Please tune in again next week. Thank you. You've been listening to All About Nursing with your host, Dr.
Joyce Bachelors. Tune in each week and get a daily dose of nursing and the healthcare services they provide. And how nurses are finding innovative ways to address the key healthcare issues they're facing today. Here on Dr.
Joyce Bachelors All About Nursing. You've been listening to the VBM Global Network. The ideas, views and opinions of this broadcast are those of the participants of the program and are not necessarily the ideas, views and opinions of the VBM Global Network Company.