The Emergency Nurses Association’s (ENA) Lantern Award is named in honor of Florence Nightingale, credited for her transformative work in modern nursing and improvement in conditions for patient care.
Known as the “Lady with the Lamp,” she would walk around the infirmary at night, carrying a lantern to see through the dark and check on wounded soldiers in need of care.
Similarly, the Emergency Department (ED) at Pennsylvania Hospital serves as a guiding light through the dark times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of their efforts of reimagining patient care during an unprecedented time, the department received its third Lantern Award.
“It has been a journey of collaboration and teamwork,” said Lauren N. Ellis, MSN, RN, CEN, NE-BC, nurse manager for Emergency Nursing at PAH. “We had to think outside the box to keep patients and each other safe, finding ways to keep things relatively normal when things were quite abnormal.”
The team joined together to create a smooth ED setup and strengthen the patient experience amidst the coronavirus commotion. One of these innovative practices was the ED's operation for patient throughput, an approach to controlling the volume of patients entering the hospital. The ED team built a tent outside of the department on Spruce Street, equipped with printers for paperwork and a preadmission COVID-19 testing area, essentially creating an outdoor lobby for patients to check in. An outdoor setup allowed staff to identify and sort patients, and to determine if they were positive or negative for COVID-19 to take appropriate precautions that would prevent any spread of infection within the hospital’s walls.
The ED nurses also offered support for COVID-19 patients who were actively passing from their battle with the virus and unable to have visitors by their bedside. They provided a hand to hold and their cell phones so patients could call and speak to their loved ones. “The team went above and beyond for caring for patients, and additionally, our team cared and comforted each other through these difficult moments,” Ellis said.
In July, the team received the news of their Lantern designation. The award will be on display in the ED, serving as a reminder to keep improving their practices and as a symbol of the culmination of the challenges presented during the pandemic.
“We can look at the award and think about what we all went through and accomplished together,” Ellis said. “We learned to be versatile and maintain a high level of patient care through a time of ambiguity. Health care is constantly changing and we need to make sure we’re rising to the challenge and being on the right side of change.”