The American Nurses Association (ANA), the largest nursing organization in the United States, has recognized The Johns Hopkins Hospital for consistently yielding outstanding patient outcomes that are tied directly to the high quality of nursing care.
“As healthcare becomes more complex and technical, Hopkins nursing philosophy has remained the same,” notes Patty Dawson, MSN, RN, the hospital’s magnet program and clinical outcomes coordinator. “Hopkins nurses strive to deliver the highest quality of care, using the best evidence and latest data to make improvements at the patients bedside.”
For example, nurses like Tameria Joy, RN, Clinical Resource Nurse, on Nelson 3 have been working hard to reduce patient falls—and their efforts have paid off. “We keep fall prevention front and center for the staff,” says Joy. “We’ve helped develop and revise the Johns Hopkins Fall Risk Screening tool and are participating in a current research study to further test the tool’s reliability & validity.” Frequent rounding is also key to this unit’s success: Nelson 3 has the lowest rate of falls among Johns Hopkins general medical units.
ANA’s unique National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI®) also noted improvement in the hospital acquired pressure ulcer rates. In the cardiac surgical intensive care units, nurse manager Jennifer Moyer, RN , conducted case reviews, involved the OR to order specialty beds in a timely manner, and helped educate facilities staff on the proper beds to return to the units from storage. Moyer is passing along the secrets of her success to Darolyn Milburn, MS Ed, RN, to continue these efforts in the future.
Hopkins is among the more than 1,500 hospitals—one in every four nationwide—that participate in NDNQI, which allows individual nursing units to compare their performance to similar units at other hospitals regionally, statewide, and nationwide.
For more information on NDNQI, visit www.ncnq.org.
