Posted: 1/3/2006
On November 28, Sunrise Clinical Manager™ was brought live in two skills labs of the prestigious Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing (JHUSON), Baltimore, MD. The move was the latest step in an important ongoing partnership between Eclipsys and the top-ranked nursing school.
Moving Nursing Education into the Future
This represents the latest step in our ongoing partnership with JHUSON. This unique academic partnership, catalyzed by Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, from Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, and Jim Cato, RN, CRNA, MHS, MSN, CPEHR, and Eclipsys chief nursing officer, was developed to incorporate Eclipsys’ advanced information technology solutions, hardware and expertise into a re-engineered nursing curriculum at the Hopkins School of Nursing. The project, officially approved in May 2005, is designed to teach students, as part of the curricula, to interact easily with healthcare information technology, and learn to use a wealth of evidence-based, best-practices clinical content and knowledge management tools. As Dr. Abbott puts it, “If nursing education doesn’t move into the future, then we will be history.”
During this past year, Eclipsys installed a simulated healthcare organization environment to enable nurses to learn on our award-winning software. Through our relationship with Hewlett-Packard, hardware consisting of servers, stationary computers, wireless computers on wheels, PDAs and tablets were provided so that students could work in an environment that simulated a real clinical nursing unit.
JHUSON and Eclipsys Implementation determined the best approach to initiate clinical documentation to the School of Nursing’s third-year nursing students. The curriculum of the fall semester included a P&A assessment in which we configured an entire order set that could be utilized. The order set was designed according to the number of weeks in the semester and documentation orders/flowsheets as related to the subject covered for the specified week in the curriculum.
Due to time constraints, the students’ documentation consist of the two final weeks remaining in the curriculum; however, 180 students rotated through the exercise.
Kudos from Faculty and Staff Alike
Patti Abbott reported that the Hopkins faculty has readily embraced this significant change and has already begun to incorporate advanced healthcare informatics, both conceptual and applied, into their coursework. A couple of comments:
“I liked being able to facilitate critical thinking in the students as part of the process of doing a complex dressing change, recording the observations of the wound status, and then documenting their interventions. It made them put everything together instead of just approaching this as a series of tasks to “check off.”
“When can we use this in my other class?”
And from students:
“This is way cool! I have used computers almost my whole life…I was wondering when healthcare would catch up!”
“This is a whole lot easier than having to record this on paper and hand it in.”
Go-Live: Day 1
The two School of Nursing labs used are made up of 33 beds, where nursing students learn clinical skills in a simulated environment. Here are some details from the first day of the go-live:
JHUSON students conducted wound assessment from 1:30-5 p.m.
Nursing students teamed together as they progressed through the procedures of assessment and changing of a “dry wound.”
Nursing students then immediately documented their wound assessments in Sunrise Clinical Manager, noting various aspects of their observations.
Once recorded, the students used the document tab to review the format of their assessment and those of fellow students.
Time from wound change and assessment through including documentation was only approximately 20 minutes.
This outstanding success is due in large part to the dedication and hard work of the Eclipsys team members, including implementation project manager Debrah Ammons, Libby Doran, Paula Kitzberger, Jesse Clark, Dan Erlandson, and Tracey Ahdel.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing team includes Patricia Abbott, Krysia Hudson, Diane Aschenbrenner, Steve Klapper, Pete Godfrey, and Bruce Dennett.
Benefits
For Eclipsys, the partnership with JHUSON provides product exposure and the ability to gain student champions who will influence the next generation of users. For Johns Hopkins, it offers a way to both attract the best students and the best faculty – a key issue in an era of high demand for nursing faculty. The program is also helping Johns Hopkins meet the market demand for new skills in graduates, enhance the relationship with clinical sites and provide a setting to test new ideas in clinical care technology.
The successful go-live of Sunrise Clinical Manager is only the latest step in what we anticipate will be a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership with JHUSON.
It’s important to also note that The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System continues to roll out the capabilities of Sunrise Clinical Manager across its organization for the direct care of its patients.
Congratulations to the entire team!
Originally appeared in the December 8, 2005 issue of Lighthouse,
an Eclipsys Corporation publication (www.eclipsys.com).