“The images I’ll remember from this past year will be nurses sitting at patients’ bedsides and holding their hand to comfort them in their critical condition,” said Christopher Huot, MSN, RN, CNML, nurse manager for Critical Care at Pennsylvania Hospital. “Our staff kept patients connected to family with video screens, making sure their loved ones were also in the room with them.”
The PAH critical care team restructured their practices for visitor interactions during the pandemic, using technology to implement an efficient telemedicine system and to keep patients connected to family and friends, while limiting the spread of the virus within the hospital. It is one of several reasons why Pennsylvania Hospital has been awarded its third consecutive Silver-level Beacon Award for Excellence from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, recognized for exceptional patient care in its Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU).
“Our critical care team has demonstrated such high levels of commitment to patients through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Huot said. “The way our staff has performed throughout this has just been awe-inspiring and makes me so proud.”
PAH’s critical care team was recognized for its emphasis on safety in the ICU and SICU, particularly on its interdisciplinary work to optimize patient care. Each morning, the team would engage in a rounding process, assessing each patient to discuss any concerns pertaining to medication distribution or fall and behavior risks.
Another component for providing effective patient care is PAH’s collaboration with other entities. Leaders from across the health system’s critical care teams, along with physicians and staff from nursing and pharmacy, attend a monthly interprofessional collaborative committee to set the standards for critical care across Penn Medicine.
“The committee allows us to strategize ways to care for patients in a way that is consistent and promotes the best practices throughout the organization,” Huot said. “It was especially helpful during COVID, such as determining PPE use across our critical care teams. We all learned from each other and helped each other provide the best possible care for our patients.”
While COVID-19 remains as a high-priority topic for the committee, they additionally discuss care for sepsis patients throughout the health system, establishing approaches for helping patients battle infections. PAH’s Sepsis Task Force, which addresses these approaches at an entity level, was also particularly praised in their Beacon Award recognition.
“The award is a testament to our staff’s hard work,” Huot said. “It was a true collaborative effort with our physicians, nurse practitioners, therapy services, pharmacy, social work, and every department that comes with treating critical care patients. They never gave up despite the hurdles that came their way.”