Staff ideas drive change with WOW results

During the My VCH survey, staff across VCH said we could do better at tapping into the ideas frontline staff have for enhancing patient care. Leadership agree. When staff come together and share their ideas, patients benefit, like patients in the Neurosciences Unit at VGH.

(l to r) Clinical nurse educator Megan Fekete,and nurse Amanda Gelowitz.

Over the last 18 months, the Neurosciences Unit has been tapping into staff ideas through a series of Releasing Time to Care (RT2C) projects that resolve staff frustrations and increase time for patient care.

“RT2C allows frontline staff to implement changes that they, as patient care providers, believe are needed to make their everyday work life more efficient,” says nurse Amanda Gelowitz, who has been participating in the initiative for just over a year.

Troubleshooting as a team

Focusing on collaboration, the Neurosciences team has engaged a wide range of staff, including: nurses, PTs, OTs, care aides, social workers, unit clerks and leaders, leaning on their collective expertise.

“While RT2C provides opportunities for quality improvement projects, at its core is positive and comprehensive team communication,” says Megan Fekete, clinical nurse educator in the Neurosciences Program. “This is most evident in the team huddles that occur daily. Staff have an opportunity to identify and discuss issues happening on the shift, and troubleshoot with the team together in that moment.”

In the past year, the unit has undertaken several projects including:

• implementing daily team huddles
• tracking care adverse events, violent and aggressive incidents, new pressure injuries, and patient falls
• standardizing bedside safety equipment bags
• implementing “Well Organized Ward” (WOW) practices

Creating more time for patient care

The WOW project called for significant changes to medication carts and stations. “Previously, the medication carts and the medication stations were unorganized, messy and lacked the space for staff to prepare patient medications,” Amanda says.

Because of the inconsistency in supplies, staff were running back and forth between the bedside and clean supply room to prepare IV medications. Through RT2C, the team reorganized both areas so all necessary items were in one place. This has greatly decreased the amount of time spent searching in the clean supply room, freeing time for direct patient care.

“We have a great team always pushing to create change to better the work so we can spend more time with our patients,” says nurse Amanda Gelowitz. “RT2C allows us to address the frustrations, listen to the staff and actually create some change to improve the working environment.”

“RT2C has really allowed our staff to find opportunities to work on initiatives that are meaningful to them and to our patients,” says Megan. “It has empowered them to speak out about things that could be improved, and to engage with the team to provide ideas and give feedback about current projects.”