News
Cleveland Clinic Initiates Innovative Preventive Health Care Teams
:: April 7, 2010
By Lynne Meyer
Building on its reputation as a global health care leader, Cleveland Clinic continues to implement innovative approaches to health care delivery.
One recent innovation is the formation of preventive health care teams. According to Michelle Dumpe, Ph.D., R.N., senior director of Nursing Education and Professional Practice Development at Cleveland Clinic, these teams of professionals brainstorm new patient care solutions to meet needs such as those defined by the National Patient Safety Goals established by The Joint Commission. Using a “fast track” methodology, a team of health care professionals is pulled together to respond in a proactive manner to meet a patient care need.
As an example of how the new preventive health care team model works, Dumpe describes a patient concern in the surgical intensive care unit. “Our rate of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers was higher than we desired,” she says. “While we had tried a number of different things, it wasn’t a coordinated effort.”
Using the fast track approach, a team of nurses, physicians, clinical technicians, respiratory therapists and transport personnel was assembled to address the problem. The team identified several interventions: a more aggressive schedule of turning patients, intensive education of the nurses and physicians regarding skin assessment and treatments, a dedicated Clinical Nurse Specialist for this unit and appropriate use of specialty beds.
Because the entire team was focused in the same manner, improved patient outcomes were realized quickly. These actions are now standard practice in all intensive care units at Cleveland Clinic, and every unit audits itself to ensure the procedures are being followed.
“One thing that sets Cleveland Clinic apart,” Dumpe says, “is that we believe in evidence-based practice.” There’s overwhelming evidence that the new preventive health care team model is working. “By the end of 2009, we had cut our hospital-acquired pressure ulcers in the surgical intensive care unit in half, and we’re now below the national benchmark for this measure,” she reports.
