The Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) recently recognized Hennepin Healthcare team members with awards in two areas: Caregiver of the Year and Innovation in Patient Care. "Health care organizations are continuing to face unprecedented challenges. These awards will celebrate the many achievements of care teams and staff despite a difficult and changing landscape," said MHA. These awards were presented at MHA's Annual Meeting this past week, a three-day conference where executives from hospitals and health systems around the state discuss the challenges health care teams are facing.
Read on to learn about these awards and please join us in congratulating these team members for their efforts.
Caregiver of the Year
The Caregiver of the Year Award honors an individual or caregiving team that provides outstanding patient-care services and exemplifies commitment to quality patient care.
From Catherine's nomination:
Catherine Deya is a Critical Care Nurse Practice Professional in Hennepin Healthcare's Professional Practice, Development, and Research department. In early 2023, Catherine brought a concern forward to the leaders of the hospital's Workplace Violence Prevention Committee that the nursing staff in the MICU were being assaulted at high rates, and this was leading to decreases in employees' sense of safety and engagement with the work. With Catherine's leadership, we convened a problem-solving team to determine the root cause of the most frequent incidents (assaults when patients are coming out of sedation and shortly after extubation) and then create a process to prevent these assaults from occurring. The team developed a new assessment of intubated patients in the MICU to predict the risk for violence after extubation. If a patient scores high on this assessment, the nursing team puts in place a series of interventions to alert other team members and then to collaborate with the physicians to make a plan for medical management to decrease the risk of severe agitation. This innovative nurse-led workplace violence prevention intervention was named the Post-Extubation Safety Screen (PESS). As the team began rolling the PESS process out on MICU, Catherine took lead on multiple fronts. She engaged with physicians and developed and deployed the education needed for the nursing staff. Catherine worked closely with the performance improvement team to develop the process and outcome measures to determine success. Catherine's leadership and eye toward excellence were primary factors in engaging the MICU team and developing the tool. Every week, Catherine carefully analyzed each patient's chart for usage of the tool and appropriate scoring. When there were breaks in the standard work, Catherine sought feedback from the team members as to how the PESS process could be improved and any barriers to completion. She also recorded successes of the program to share with the strategic team and help us to determine collectively the best next steps. The intervention has become permanent in the MICU. To our knowledge, there are no other such interventions documented in the literature for workplace violence prevention in ICUs, and much of the praise and gratitude for this unique program can go to Catherine Deya.
Innovation in Patient Care
The Innovation in Patient Care Award honors hospitals and health systems that have developed or implemented creative, new methods and models for the delivery of patient care.
From the nomination:
We are proud to nominate an innovative, culturally responsive program that has reduced psychiatric readmissions for Muslim patients by 47%. The program was developed and implemented in 2022 through a unique partnership between Hennepin Healthcare's Departments of Psychiatry, Spiritual Care, and Population Health, and Open Path Resources (OPR), a Minnesota based non-profit based in the Minnesota Muslim communities. Leaders from OPR and Hennepin Healthcare collaborated to design the program which incorporates Muslim spiritual care into psychiatric care for Muslim patients to address concerning disparities in care outcomes. Three Muslim Spiritual Care Providers (one imam and two female faith leaders) are provided by OPR and embedded within the Hennepin Healthcare Spiritual Care Department. They meet with patients on our inpatient units to provide spiritual and cultural support, address stigma and fears, and encourage openness to their diagnoses, care teams, and treatments, attend care conferences, and offer follow-up support after discharge. Since the program began in 2022, there has been a 47% decrease in Muslim patients' readmission rates and 75% reduction in disparities between Muslim and other patients' readmission rates.
Statements from former patients:
- "I no longer feel this illness is a punishment from God. It is like any other illness, and I have more understanding and ability to manage my situation."
- "Seeing an imam from my community who is also a part of the care team caused me to respect and trust more in the system and the providers."
Statement from Inpatient Psychiatry provider
- "The Muslim spiritual care providers are impacting the care we provide. We see real changes in patients because of them. We believe in this wholistic approach."
Statement from Muslim Community Leader
- "We have so many families dealing with shame, confusion and misinformation. We worry about family members, our youth struggling with thoughts of suicide or harm. We feel so much fear with few answers. Seeing healthcare and communities working together – this gives us hope."
