Everything Matters: inside nationwide children s MARCH 2013 Every Zero Matters
The Zero Hero program has prevented more than 500 events of harm. Moving Toward Zero Preventable Harm Zero Hero was launched in 2009 as part of the hospital s Quality and Safety efforts. Led by Chief Medical Officer Dr. Rich Brilli, Zero Hero challenged us all to help eliminate preventable harm. We ve made great progress over the last four years and have dramatically improved our safety culture and high-reliability practices. Zero Hero Points of Pride Nationwide Children s was the first pediatric institution to aspire to zero preventable harm and make it a public goal. We were the first health care institution to develop a pediatric preventable harm index. The model is now used for both statewide and national patient safety efforts. Zero Hero has prevented more than 500 events of harm, including 63 Serious Safety Events. And during the Zero Hero time period, overall hospital mortality has decreased 40 percent. Since Zero Hero began, we ve achieved a 50 percent reduction in actual harm and an 85 percent reduction in serious safety events. We ve Been Working Toward 2013 The goal of Zero Hero has been, and will always be, to aspire to provide perfect, harm-free care zero preventable harm. When the program began, we set our sights on eliminating all preventable harm by the end of 2013. Our patients and their families deserve nothing less than a zero harm aspiration. Achieving zero harm for an entire calendar year will be a challenge. But we can accomplish periods of time with zero harm. In fact, we have achieved zero harm in many domains of our harm index. This year 2013 is the Zero Year. How close we will get depends upon each of you working together as a team, watching out for each other and practicing the Zero Hero error prevention tools and behaviors. As 2012 came to a close, Nationwide Children s continued to see significant declines in harm. And this year, we will highlight Zero Hero Zones on our Preventable Harm Index to help identify the areas where we are achieving zero harm. While we may not see zeros across the entire Preventable Harm Index at the end of 2013, we hope to see many periods of zeros in multiple categories. What s Next? In addition to patient safety, this year Zero Hero will take a closer look at employee safety keeping yourself safe and increasing safety for your coworkers and your environment. Every single employee has a duty and a responsibility to create a safe day, every day by being a Zero Hero. Look for more information on employee safety efforts in the coming months. Visit ANCHOR/Zero-Hero-Home to take a look at the Zero Hero Preventable Harm Index and learn more about Zero Hero. 2. 3.
Spot Reads Mark Your Calendars! Bring your child to work day. The 11th annual Bring Your Son or Daughter to Work Day is coming on April 25. Registration begins on April 1. Look for details in the April 5 Employee Activities email. Contact Kelicia Edwards, Education, for more information. Patients Take Priority in Off-Stage Elevators To help keep our patients safe during transport, when patient transport boards the elevator with a patient, please exit the elevator. There are five additional elevators available to use on each unit. Some of these elevators are used for food service or linens, but they re available for all staff to use. Email Retention Changes Beginning April 30, emails older than three years will be permanently removed from Outlook. This follows Administrative Policy III 7. The policy serves as a safety and legal precaution to prevent data from being compromised. We must strictly follow the policy in order to avoid unnecessary and avoidable high litigation costs and increasing IT costs. Emails will be removed on a daily basis as they reach the three year mark. To make sure you don t lose any information you need, take some time to review your inbox. Visit ANCHOR/ Information-Services-Home for more information. Nationwide Children s Ranked in Parents Magazine 10 Best Children s Hospitals Parents magazine has ranked Nationwide Children s Hospital 9th in its 2013 list of the 10 Best Children s Hospitals. In subspecialty areas, our Emergency Department (5th) was ranked in the top five in the nation and Hematology/ Oncology (6th), Neonatology (6th) and Cardiology/Cardiothoracic services (9th) were ranked among the top 10 in their respective areas. Parents magazine rankings are significant in their visibility to parents and consumers and speak not only to our clinical excellence, but also our dedication to the patient experience. Thank you for everything you do on behalf of our patients and their families every day. Family Resource Center Helps Families Get Comfortable Beginning last October, the Family Resource Center (FRC) staff has been providing weekly tours of the new main hospital for families interested in learning about the services offered at Nationwide Children s. The tours are designed specifically for newly admitted patient families whose children aren t staying in the new main hospital, but any inpatient family is welcome. Each tour covers the services located on the Green Path and the first floor and lower level of the main hospital. Tours begin at 5:30 p.m. every Thursday in the FRC. Contact the Family Resource Center at (614) 722-2252 for more information. Impacting cancer research around the world Imagine 65 giant freezers, chilled by liquid nitrogen, each carrying more than 30,000 tiny pieces of precious cargo. Samples of tumor, blood and tissue collected from nearly every child (and many adults) diagnosed with cancer in North America in the last three decades. These samples have been shipped from across the country (and from as far away as Australia) to the Biopathology Center at Nationwide Children s more than 1,000 each day to be processed, cataloged, stored and most importantly, made available to scientists and cancer researchers across the world. One of only a handful of such centers of its kind, Nationwide Children s is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of tissue banking. What began with banking pediatric cancer has grown to include supporting large cancer genomics projects as research teams seek our Center s expertise. Atlas a massive effort to map the genetic roots of 35 adult cancers from 10,000 patients. You might remember a recent major study on breast cancer conducted as part of The Cancer Genome Atlas. Published in the prestigious journal Nature, the study on the genomics of breast cancer not only confirmed that there are four distinct genetic types of the disease but found genetic similarities to ovarian cancer, suggesting that some drugs used to treat ovarian cancer may be effective against certain forms of breast cancer that share the same genetic abnormalities. The collaborative effort included 350 researchers who studied the DNA and rna of breast cancer tumors of 825 patients at various stages of the disease. Without the outstanding work of our tissue banking staff, that study, and the enlightening results, may never have happened. In fact, Nationwide Children s was selected by the National Cancer Institute to serve as the only Biospecimen Core Resource to process all the samples for The Cancer Genome 4. 5.
Asthma ipad App Educates Families January Winners February Winners From the Heart november Winner December Winner January Winner Renee Carpenter-Wells Neurosurgery Dr. Greg Stewart Emergency Medicine Jennifer Glasgow s daughter was injured while riding her bike. Jennifer nominated Dr. Stewart for the Service From the Heart award. My daughter crashed her bike on a bike trail. She sustained a compound fracture in her right arm as well as various cuts and bruises. As my husband and I were waiting for the ambulance to arrive a good Samaritan who was out jogging stopped to help. How fortunate for us that he was a doctor in the ED at Nationwide Children s! Dr. Stewart did a quick assessment of our daughter s condition and explained the fracture to us. He helped keep us calm and told us what we could expect when we arrived at the hospital. He spoke with the EMTs and told them his concerns as they were evaluating her. He even offered to help my husband get our other two children home while I rode in the ambulance with my daughter. Dr. Stewart went above and beyond to help us that day, and we want him to know just how grateful we are that he was there. january Team Winner Hilltop Primary Care Rachel Maruscak RN Dr. Dane Snyder Dr. Copenheaver Stefanie Alten Roxana Rodriguez Marti Crow Kim Robinson Alicia Keyes Christina Oldham Vicki Peterson Tamesha Joyce Cindy Nichols Candy Harris Abby Foster OT Tammy Ross s son Crew sees Abby Foster for Occupational Therapy. Tammy nominated Abby for the Service From the Heart award. I would like to express my heart felt appreciation to Miss Abby for everything she has done for my son, Crew. Crew started at Nationwide Children s with speech therapy and was evaluated for OT. Since Crew has started meeting with Abby for weekly OT appointments he has made remarkable strides. I am forever grateful to Abby. She has helped Crew in many areas, from teaching him how to swing to constructing a special pencil for him to use at school. She will be forever cherished in our family. The Hilltop Primary Center held a Picture with Santa event on Saturday December 15, 2012. Rachel Maruscak, the Hilltop charge nurse, had an idea to offer patients the opportunity to come to the clinic and have their pictures taken with Santa. She thought our patients may not have an opportunity to take pictures with Santa in the community due to the cost. The Hilltop staff collectively worked to create flyers, craft stations, a mailbox to the North Pole and pictures with Santa. Dr. Dane Snyder dressed up The Wheeler family nominated Renee Carpenter-Wells for a Service From the Heart award. Renee has provided unprecedented and unparalleled care for my son on a consistent basis for the last two years. Renee has been a fixture in our family s life since our three-month stay in the NICU. We have been blessed with outstanding care from all of the doctors, nurses, surgeons and staff we have met at Nationwide Children s. Renee s approach and genuine love of her patients and their families is on a tier of its own. She embodies all that Nationwide Children s strives to promote and achieve. While it is a miniscule gesture in comparison to the care and support she has provided others, including my family, she needs to be recognized for the practitioner and person she is on a daily basis. as Santa. More than 50 children attended the event. Each child created a Christmas ornament, received a bag of cookies, wrote a letter to Santa, had a picture taken with Santa and went home with a new toy. The most memorable story shared from the event was a child who wrote a letter stating, Santa I hope you are not sick this year and will be able to deliver gifts this year. The staff reached out to this patient s family to give them a gift card to provide the child s Christmas wish list. Did you know that asthma is the most frequent admitting diagnosis at Nationwide Children s? A generous grant from the Lewin Family Foundation/Hamilton Parker is helping to change that. An interdisciplinary team from Nationwide Children s has created an ipad app to deliver asthma education in the primary care setting. Designed with modules focused on symptoms, triggers, facts about medications and common myths about asthma, the interactive app delivers vital information to parents through videos and quizzes. The app takes about 15 minutes total quick enough to complete before or after an appointment. The goal is to decrease the number of Emergency Department visits made by families of children with asthma by giving them the tools they need to prevent and manage asthma attacks. This is the first app created and used at Nationwide Children s to help manage a chronic disease. The app is currently being piloted in several primary care clinics with hopes to expand to additional settings, including specialty clinics and Emergency Room and Urgent Cares. Employee of the month Jen Palkovic Information Services Volunteer of the month Kristen Varney 275 hours of service Employee of the month Donna Teetsel Westerville Close to Home Volunteers of the month Dorothy and Jack Clutter More than 155 hours of service each To read the story of each winner listed above, visit NationwideChildrens.org/Inside-Nationwide-Childrens. 6. 7.
Terry Elifritz Nurse Practitioner When: 4:00 p.m. Where: Nationwide Children s Newborn Special Care Unit (NSCU), Doctor s Hospital on the spot Terry Elifritz began working at Doctor s Hospital when she was just 16. Today, she s a Nurse Practitioner in the Nationwide Children s NSCU at Doctor s Hospital. During a busy day in the NSCU, Terry completes daily rounds with the attending physician, examines each baby and develops a plan of care for each patient. And every week, Terry attends 10 to 12 deliveries. After more than 20 years and thousands of deliveries, Terry says it s still her favorite part of the job. 7811 NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID COLUMBUS, OH PERMIT NO. 777 Nationwide Children s Hospital 700 Children s Drive Columbus, Ohio 43205-2696