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AT HIGH-TECH BRONX VA, A LOW-TECH CHAT WITH
PATIENTS MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE -- "When I
make my rounds every week, I always go in and
ask the patient how's the care."
Story here...
http://www.nydailynews.com/
boroughs/2007/07/09/2007-07
-09_she_gets_lowdown_on
_hitech_va_hosp.html
Story below:
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She gets lowdown on hi-tech VA hosp
by Clem Richardson
The James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center in the Bronx
has some of the most cutting-edge systems and technology in the country.
Patient records are computerized and accessible at any of the 160 VA
Medical Centers in the country. Medications are delivered to patients
using bar codes on their ID wristbands.
Yet Lynda Olender has a decidedly unsophisticated way of making sure all
is right at the giant facility off Kingsbridge Road in Kingsbridge
Heights.
She asks.
"When I make my rounds every week, I always go in and ask the patient
how's the care," said Olender, the hospital's chief nurse executive.
"I'm not afraid to ask them if they know who their nurse is. Then I
compliment the nurse on a job well done, or ask what we can change to
improve the patient's stay."
Olender is one of three people - along with the associate director and
the chief of staff - charged with making sure things run smoothly at
Peters.
Her weekly rounds cover considerable ground: The hospital's patient care
centers include three medical surgical units, an intensive care unit, an
emergency room, 13 speciality clinics, an extended-care nursing home, a
62-bed spinal care unit and a rehabilitation center, where paralyzed
veterans are taught how to drive a vehicle.
Olender, a mother of three, started as a candy striper at St. Vincent's
Hospital on Staten Island when she was 16 years old, graduated from the
Kings County Hospital School of Nursing in 1967 and received a master's
degree in nursing from New York University. She is an adjunct professor
at NYU, where she is in the doctoral program.
She came to Peters in 1999, just as the bar code system to deliver
medication was being put in place in Veterans Administration hospitals
around the nation as a way of cutting down on the all too common
incidents - at all hospitals - of patients being given the wrong
medication.
"It [implementing the system] was quite an ordeal because it's change
and people don't like change," Olender said. "But we got on the
bandwagon."
The VA's use of electronic recordkeeping for patients has proven to have
several advantages, she said. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans two
years ago, there was less of a disruption in care for the evacuated
veterans because the records were online.
One program, the nursing outcomes data project, allows for extensive
comparisons and analyses of nursing care that patients received at VA
hospitals around the country and how those treatments affected patients'
recovery.
"It's a great opportunity for us to look at outcomes and do nursing
research," Olender said.
Peters, unlike many private hospitals, has not suffered much of a
nursing shortage, Olender said. Some 274 nurses work there, including 85
registered nurses.
That's partly because Peters hires nurses who live in the community and
offers many programs and opportunities to increase their skill level,
including a $5,000 yearly scholarship program.
"Sometimes nurses come out of school and they are shocked because there
is so much work involved with being a nurse," Olender said. "But the
young nurses love the bar code system and the electronic records. Not a
lot of people leave us, but many of those who do come back. We are
really like a family here."
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Larry Scott --
