Always improving: INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center receives 2016 Women’s Choice Award
by Jason Chandler, Staff Writer
INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center has earned the recognition of the 2016 Women’s Choice Award, says Keith Stephens, RN, administrative director for quality at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City. This distinction honors INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center as being one of the best hospitals in the United States for patient safety. Two basic components including patient safety indicators and prevention indicators were integral to the process, he said.
“I think it helps validate our efforts for patient safety and high quality health care,” Stephens said.
This distinction recognizes an outstanding interdisciplinary role of health care throughout the hospital, said Harry Wetz, respiratory therapist, patient safety officer and director of quality.
“I would say it’s the culture that we have here. One infection is too many,” said Keri Bayer, RN, administrative director for quality. “And so any patient that walks through our doors, we want to ensure we are doing the right care, providing it in a standard way. And we have a lot of processes in place to ensure we allow our nurses to provide care in the easiest way possible with evidence based guidelines.”
Bayer said she is honored to work at INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center. It is the only organization she has worked for as a nurse and the only one she intends to serve. Her dedication flows from the set of values INTEGRIS has throughout its system. The personalized care is evidence based offering the highest levels of care.
“Every patient that comes here deserves that,” she said regardless of gender.
The hospital encompasses a highly trained interdisciplinary team of physicians, nurses and colleagues. All of the staff maintains annual training to maintain its competency. It has put in place standardized work flows of product, documentation and strict operating procedures to prevent infections. Outcomes are monitored closely for infection and safety.
“We hold each other accountable if we see a variation in that practice. The expectation is that we hold our peers accountable,” Bayer said.
They strive to understand if there is a break in the process how INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center as an organization allowed the break to occur, Bayer said.
“We correct it,” she continued. “And we share that information and just continue to get better as we move forward.”
Gwen Harrington, RN, infection prevention coordinator, said they are engaged at all levels to identify what needs to be improved.
“We have great involvement in ownership from not only the patient care staff. That means not the leaders. That is the bedside staff nurses,” Harrington said. “They are doing the work every day.”
The shared knowledge among the staff helps to engage leadership effectively and the medical staff. Improvement opportunities from the physicians’ points of view are integrated into the best standards of care. Three physicians representing different services will attend meetings when discussing general processes. They are involved in solving the problems with the patient care staff.
“I think that is one of the things that we are getting better and better at to drive some of the outcomes that we have,” Harrington said.
There are always new products and equipment to blend into new processes with variations, Harrington said. Cleaning and disinfection of equipment to prevent associated infection is standardized. The process is ongoing.
“Just in the last six months we’ve updated education and competencies with training not only internally, but with our vendors and our suppliers,” Harrington said. “We bring in those people from those companies, the clinical experts and equipment manufacturers to give us the manufacturers instructions for use of equipment to help us drive those outcomes and prevent occurrences.”
Monitoring looks at compliance with the practices and cleaning and disinfection in order to maintain quality of care, Bayer said.
“It’s truly every person that works at INTEGRIS that is honored, not just our clinical staff,” Bayer said. “It takes everyone to make it happen.”
Wetz said the bedside nurses strive every day to exceed what is expected of them. This attitude lends well to patient satisfaction, he said.
“When a patient is sick. It’s a very difficult time for them,” Wetz said. “Their understanding of what’s going on is heavily weighed on the communication level of the bedside caregiver. That directly effects satisfaction.”
