Celebrating Ten Years of Improving Health Care for Older Adults
Making Best Geriatric Practice
Standard Practice
Download 2006 Hartford Annual Report pdf
Strategy No. 2: Promoting Work Environment Changes
to Support Good Geriatric Nursing
Taking prescription drugs can be a challenge for older patients with multiple prescriptions. At Rochester General Hospital, Rochester, New York, nurse
leaders Sue Montagliano, RN, and Sue Nickoley, MS, RN, are testing programs to help patients manage their own medications.
Individual nurses armed with the knowledge and skills to
most effectively care for their older patients may still fail unless the work
environment is conducive to supporting their efforts. Therefore, the
second strategy of the Hartford Institute is to influence care of older
patients at a systems level by integrating geriatric nursing best practices
into the standard practices and protocols of health care institutions.
Good nursing is the key to effectively managing the acute care of older patients while preventing or minimizing troubling adverse outcomes, because while older patients can benefit from treatments received in the hospital, hospitalization itself can result in complications. For example, pressure ulcers occur frequently in older hospitalized patients; these are serious problems that can lead to serious infections or even death. Early detection of patients who are at risk for pressure ulcers is the key to prevention, and nurses can identify patients for whom preventive interventions should be undertaken.
However, nurses who are well trained and have access to information and resources on proper care of older adult patients can still fail to provide the best possible care unless they receive the necessary support in their work environment. Health care institutions must have structures in place and the motivation to ensure their personnel have the resources to employ practices that can reduce adverse events of hospitalization for older patients. Truly improving health care for older adults depends on hospitals and other health care facilities making this an institutional priority.
The Hartford Institute has promoted system level change through the Nurses Improving Care to Healthsystem Elders (NICHE) program. NICHE encourages the use of nursing models to achieve system change, including encouraging hospitals to utilize Geriatric Resource Nurses and supporting the use of Acute Care for Elders (ACE) units.
Visit the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing Web site: www.hartfordign.org