Nurses at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre are officially among the best in the world.
On Wednesday the hospital was officially recognized as a Best Practice Spotlight Organization, a designation handed down by the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario.
Carolyn Freitag, The Health Sciences Centre’s acting chief nursing executive, said the three-year application process involved implementing evidence-based nursing across the hospital.
“The importance of that is we’re impacting patient outcomes. So when they come we’re up-to-date, we’re delivering our practices according to research evidence and we provide efficient and effective care,” Freitag said, adding the institution took an extra year to come into compliance with the standards set by the RNAO.
Freitag cited a number of examples of practices that have been implemented since the process began. First and foremost is a smoking cessation program that screens all patients as an assessment tool, what they hope is a first step toward convincing them to quit the habit.
“We can identify all of our patients who smoke at that time and then offer assistance. Another example is the falls prevention. We were recognized, through accreditation also, as a leader in the nursing intervention is assessing our patients for fall (risk), and then putting into place a nursing intervention to prevent falls.”
Other guidelines added include assessment and management of pain, vascular access devices and therapeutic relationships.
Doris Grinspun, the RNAO’s CEO, said the BPSO honour carries plenty of weight. It was well deserved at TBRHSC, she added.
“They’ve already demonstrated a commitment and expertise in ensuring the practice of nurses is based on evidence. We all got to school and we all study, but instead of practicing based on what we studied, five, 10, 15 years ago, in here the commitment is to work with the RNAO to implement evidence-based clinical guidelines into the day-to-day practice of nurses,” Grinspun said.
The hospital will also be able to act as a mentor institution for other medical facilities in Northern Ontario, the rest of the province and around the world, Grinspun added.
