The post JCU Nursing: Become a Nurse and Join a Legacy of Innovation first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

One “patient” in the educational setting is Aria — a medical manikin (or mannequin) from CAE Healthcare that represents a 7-year-old child and features vocal expressions and sounds, an advanced airway, and neurological and bleeding systems. By mimicking human anatomy and physiology, the manikin allows pediatric-nursing students to develop hands-on clinical skills in a safe way that does not risk harm to actual patients.

Manikins and other simulation equipment have become powerful tools in pediatric-nurse training programs.

Benefits of Simulation-Based Training in Nursing

Simulation-based training is an educational technique that creates realistic scenarios in a controlled environment. It allows future and current nurses to improve their skills and learn from mistakes. Furthermore, nurses can enhance their pediatric assessment skills and advance proficiency in the nursing process — all while reducing anxiety about pediatric care.

Simulation has been enhanced by many high-tech developments. The technology in simulation-based learning is designed to prepare users for cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills. Being interactive, the training requires face-to-face educational sessions.

In addition to manikins, simulation scenarios and processes can include:

• Partial-task simulators — models (e.g., hands-arms) used to implement a clinical skill or task that can be repeated by students, for example placing an airway or wound suturing.
• Virtual reality — uses computers and standardized patients (virtual patients) to create a realistic learning and evaluation setting.
• E-learning — computer-generated simulators represent tasks or settings used to facilitate learning.

Nursing students use simulation learning experiences to practice, and they receive corrective feedback embedded into a simulator that allows them to become competent. Meanwhile, faculty members evaluate students’ skills, including critical thinking.

Building Skills and Confidence

Competency and confidence are among the personal goals of pediatric-nursing students. In the college lab, practice through simulation manikins allows nursing students to prepare for true-to-life medical situations without fear of performing procedures. The manikins are the closest things to real people with real conditions and injuries.

Importantly, simulation-based education prepares nurses for careers in pediatrics. From infancy through adolescence, children have different stages of development that affect their interactions with nurses. Challenges in pediatric nursing include treating frightened and confused children, inflicting pain on babies and young children, and keeping stressed parents informed and calm. 

Infants, in particular, are a special population because pediatric nurses cannot explain procedures to them like they can older children. Nurses must focus on maintaining a steady hand and composure when caring for them. Fortunately, John Carroll University’s nursing students have the advantage of developing the skills to treat babies with the help of Luna, the infant manikin from CAE Healthcare, that enables learners to gain proficiency in newborn assessment, resuscitation, and advanced life support.

Innovative Nurse Training

Indeed, training for nursing pediatric patients presents some challenges and limitations. Innovative strategies like simulation-based learning enhance prelicensure nursing education. Simulation can also promote teamwork and collaboration and the ability to develop a protocol for treating patients.

Advancement in technology allows John Carroll University to deliver meaningful, interactive, and intentional clinical experiences for nursing students that accomplish three objectives:

1. enhance their pediatric assessment skills
2. reduce their anxiety about pediatric inpatient care
3. advance their proficiency in the nursing process

John Carroll University offers a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program that features low- and high-fidelity nursing simulation labs, where students learn to practice skills that coincide with classroom lectures and clinical experiences. Specialized courses, such as Obstetrics, Immediate Newborn Care, and Pediatrics, are linked with simulated experiences focusing on nursing care.

Pursue a nursing degree at John Carroll University, a private Jesuit university near Cleveland, Ohio, which offers state-of-the-art clinical training across the region’s three major healthcare systems.

The post How Simulation-Based Training Enhances Pediatric Nurse Education first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

Nursing programs such as the BSN degree at John Carroll University, a private Jesuit university located near Cleveland, Ohio, have begun to incorporate additional coursework, training, and conversation about the overlap between mental and physical health. The goal is to help nurses serve a broader range of patients, raise overall awareness of emotional, cognitive, and physical factors, while easing the pressures placed on nurses and other medical staff.

One concept that new nurses can familiarize themselves with is called therapeutic alliance. Nurses may see the alliance as a way to magnify their impact by applying both professional and interpersonal skills; while the patient desires to be involved in their care, and to be more broadly seen and understood. 

Therapeutic alliance becomes a piece of a larger shift of approaching mental health, recovery time and overall well-being more holistically going forward.

Therapeutic Alliance Basics

Researchers first began to study the connection between patient outcomes and provider/patient relationships in the 1980s, recognizing that the traditional notion of a unidirectional, authoritative exchange from a clinician to the patient failed to capture the full picture. At its most basic, the shift involves moving from a ‘doing to’ the patient mindset to one of engaging meaningfully with patients and families. 

No Two Interactions Alike

Early in their clinical rotations, younger nurses begin to recognize that every patient interaction has a few traits in common, and many more that make it truly one of a kind. Building a therapeutic alliance involves a convergence between the nurses life and work experience, and the patient’s outlook on their condition. Each new pairing starts the alliance building process over again.

Beyond Acute Mental Health Settings

The idea of therapeutic alliance and patient participation in their treatment is most often applied in acute mental health settings and conditions. One frequently studied example is the alliance between psychiatric nurses and patient populations with eating disorders where there is a high-risk of relapse. But therapeutic alliance offers insights and applies across healthcare situations. Surgeries, drugs and other interventions cannot fully account for the improvement of patient outcomes. One study for instance showed that nonverbal communication between physical therapists and their patients predicts health outcomes in geriatric settings.

Research continues to reveal the nuanced ways that nurses and patients establish ground rules and trust, essential for a good working relationship (the “alliance”) and progress toward improved health. Foundational concepts such as control and self-determination come into play, and while skills such as emotional intelligence and empathy always play a role, the patient-provider negotiation remains dynamic and highly subjective. As younger nurses move further into their careers, they can observe the therapeutic alliance at work among their fellow nurses and the patients in their care. Research findings show that successful therapeutic alliances do not magically develop through negotiation of equal partners. Rather, the therapeutic alliance is often dependent on nurses’ capacity to maintain their position of clinical authority, while also building a human bond and  demonstrating their trustworthiness to patients. When patients trust nurses, they might shift their behavior and attitude about their ability to invest time and energy in a new concept of well-being.

The post What is a Therapeutic Alliance and How Does it Improve Patient Outcomes first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

Students enrolling in the John Carroll University Bachelors of Science in Nursing program in Cleveland, Ohio recognize that the future is now — collaboration between humans and various forms of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and tools will be a mainstay of nursing education and practice.

AI, Data Analysis and Machine Learning in Nursing

Application of data analysis and machine learning algorithms continues to expand in an effort to enhance diagnostics, treatment, and patient care. An early example is the Emergency Triage Systems software that can assist nurses in accurately triaging patients in emergency departments. 

The Healthcare artificial intelligence market is expected to reach 280.77 billion by 2032, according to a research report published by Spherical Insights & Consulting.

A good example of how computational tools might one day analyze large volumes of medical information, including patient electronic health records and imaging data, to uncover valuable insights and support clinical decision-making is an experimental new platform from Glass Health. The tool foreshadows a day when nurses, doctors and others use a measure of automation to generate a clinical plan or differential diagnosis. 

Practicing nurses today interact with a range of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and tools to manage everything from medication interactions, preventable falls, surgical complications, and dangerous infections.

This overview from My American Nurse gives nurses an overview of AI applications— machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP)—and their implications for nursing research and practice, as well as their potential role in improving patient care and health outcomes.

Here’s a quick glossary of terms:

Machine Learning

Machine learning refers to the use of a computer program to autonomously learn from data to perform a certain task. The “learning” refers to software self-adjustment that fine-tunes an algorithm over time to increase accuracy. Like any data-dependent tool, a machine learning tool’s function and use are only as good as its data sources. Nurses with a boots-on-the-ground perspective understand patient care and the information that’s required to make informed clinical decisions. Nurse input improves the applicability and accuracy of machine learning tools.

Deep Learning

Deep learning, a subfield of machine learning, looks to use neural networks for advanced pattern recognition to predict, treat or prevent adverse health events such as infections, aneurysms or early onset of neurological disease. By integrating data from many sources, AI may someday be used to tailor treatments precisely to patients’ specific genes, lifestyles, and treatment preferences.

Natural Language Processing

Natural language processing allows for analysis of EHR text data, including nursing notes which are rich with clinical information. A wide variety of applications have been developed using nursing notes, including predicting emergency department patient disposition (Sterling and colleagues), uncovering patient financial barriers (Skaljic and colleagues), and predicting falls (Nakatani and colleagues).

The post The future of artificial and collaborative intelligence in nursing is now. first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

As the healthcare industry and nurses themselves process the three-year long pandemic, chief among the concerns and questions is: how do we help nurses balance care for themselves along with the need to serve patients?

Impact on Hospitals

The issue of nurse well-being has cast a spotlight on everything from hospital management, to improved operations and logistics in public health and medicine. Hospital administrators understand the risks. Turnover among nurses can quickly add expenses to a balance sheet. According to the NSI Nursing Solutions survey, the average cost of a single turnover for a bedside RN is $40,038. That translates to an average hospital loss of between $3.6m to $6.5m/yr. Each percent decline in RN turnover costs the average hospital an additional $270,800/yr.

Of course, for nurses themselves, the costs and risks go well beyond lost productivity, satisfaction and income. Increasingly, experts look at our understanding of emotional intelligence and the role it can play in nurse self-care. 

Emotional Intelligence

At the bedside, nurses track and interpret a steady stream of vital signs and other data, along with a patient’s subtle and not-so-subtle feedback. The lines between caring for and caring about a patient inevitably collide and cross.

Along with the emotions of patients, families and colleagues, nurses juggle their own responses — sometimes in the moment and at other times during a rare minute for reflection.

Four components of emotional intelligence

Nurses can consider four components of emotional intelligence that support healthy relationships and personal balance: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

1. Self-awareness

Some people learn to identify and describe personal emotional reactions in childhood. Others learn in the daily interactions of the adult world. The insights that come with routine self-awareness allows one to connect emotional reactions to particular triggers — people or situations. One idea used by professionals across occupations is to give yourself a five-minute emotional time out to collect yourself before re-engaging a challenging exchange.

2. Self-management

The daily routine of a nurse is inherently unpredictable — that’s part of the profession’s appeal. Emotional intelligence insights connected to self-management allow you to interrupt impulsive feelings and behaviors before they get the better of you or a situation. Behind every emotional response is a belief system — some underlying rules we carry about ourselves, about others and about the world. Nursing inevitably challenges everyone’s world view — and asks that you be open to change, expansion and a more complex understanding.

3. Social awareness

Emotional intelligence can be directed inward or outward. As the collective stress of the culture intensifies, so too does the need for more refined and resilient social awareness. The expression “reading the room” describes an ability to step back and observe the cues — posture and body language, gestures, fashion statements, voice intonation, verbal power moves — that create the context of any emotional exchange. In clinical settings, it’s crucial to find ways to bring people together and create relational ties despite the inherently cold atmosphere of a hospital or the frequent shift changes and people movement.

4. Relationship management

Given the pace of a typical clinical day, much of what gets communicated between co-workers and patients happens non-verbally. Often, the key to relationship management is becoming more conscious of nonverbal cues — an otherwise instinctive aspect of our communication style. Skills such as active and reflective listening, allow you to hear others fully without interruption and respond with a non-emotional summary of what you’ve heard if a response is prompted. These and other relationship management skills help to lay the foundation for trust with others.

Good for Nurse and Patient

Few professions match nursing in its demand to sift through emotionally charged interactions and decisions on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Even a minor health crisis will stir strong emotions — guilt, fear, shame, grief — in patients, family members and co-workers. Studies suggest a connection between your nurses’ ability to identify and track emotions, and nurse satisfaction and patient success. Emotional intelligence has been correlated with improved retention, less burnout and both physical and emotional wellness in nurses.

The Future of Nurse Self Care

Experts agree that the health care world that we know and interact with today will change in the years ahead. The John Carroll University BSN program has been designed with the awareness that nurses will become more specialized in their practice (health assessment, pharmacology, disease prevention, differential diagnosis and disease management), interact more with predictive technologies  and assume more advanced practice roles. Along with a degree such as a BSN from John Carroll, and additional certifications and training, nurses will need particular and enduring character traits and human interaction skills — deep emotional intelligence — to thrive and survive for the long haul.

The post Emotional Intelligence in Nursing and the Impact on Nurse & Patient Well-Being first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

We all know that trying to download and commit to memory every bit of basic science and practice knowledge required for graduation can be challenging. We also know that nurse education is changing.

The faculty and curriculum leaders who designed the BSN degree offered by John Carroll University encourage all nursing students to arrive with three basic insights and strategies: 

• competency-based education
• essential nursing domains/concepts
• learning styles

Competency-Based Education

Familiarize yourself with the competency-based education, which stresses the importance of specific skills and clinical judgment that translate easily and directly from the college environment to the bedside. Advances in simulation manikins and labs allow faculty to contextualize new nursing knowledge within an experiential learning environment that mirrors real-world practice settings.

Competency-based education values the outputs of an educational experience versus the inputs of the educational environment and system. Rather than faced with the proverbial fire hydrant of reading, you are invited onto the stage of an experiential learning environment where your knowledge, emotions, communication skills and more are revealed, supported and honed.

Essential Nursing Domains/Concepts

Scan the American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s Essentials Series, which introduces 10 domains and eight core concepts with associated sub-competencies within each of the domains that represent the essence of professional nursing practice.

The eight core concepts are:

Clinical Judgment 

Your ability to interpret information and reason in the delivery of care. 

Communication

Your command of  tools (voice, writing, behavior, body language, emotion) and drivers (intention, motive, partnership, trust, and presence) to manage yourself and others within teams and across professions.

Compassion

Your recognition that humans are meaning-making beings, and that compassionate care hinges on some measure of relating to others as fellow, flawed human beings.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 

Your ability to see beyond the buzzword phrase, and recognize that a person’s birth, origin and experience exerts an influence on everything — from financial resources to emotional resilience — that show up in your encounter with a person trying to heal and recover.

Ethics 

Your grasp of a vast and growing set of nuanced questions and conversations around what it means to do the right thing, medically, legally and morally.

Evidence-Based Practice 

Your capacity to investigate current evidence and clinical expertise, and reconcile data and science with individual and family preferences. 

Health Policy 

Your ability to widen the perspective of what makes for good nursing from the intense focus of the bedside and a broader view of how policy impacts nursing practice and patient outcomes.

Social Determinants of Health Determinants 

Your facility to see beyond the electronic health record and appreciate that the soil of someone’s birth and beginnings (personal, social, economic, and environmental) exert a sustained impact on health. 

Individual Learning Styles

Within nursing education and practice settings, leaders may encourage you to get to know your individual learning style. While there are many models for individual learning style differences, the following offers some basic types and tendencies.

Sensing Learner

You tend to be a practical, concrete thinker typically oriented toward facts and procedures.

Intuitive Learner

You tend to be an abstract thinker, energized by alternative approaches and innovations, and oriented toward theories and underlying meanings.

Visual Learner

You tend to prefer visual representations of presented material such as pictures, diagrams, and flow charts.

Verbal Learner

You tend to prefer written and spoken explanations, and will likely read body language and cues. 

Active Learner

You tend to gravitate toward group settings and consensus-based solutions. You enjoy the iterative process, and learn by trying ideas and solutions out until one rises.

Reflective Learner

You tend to work best alone or with a single, familiar partner. You work through problems in an orderly, sequential process.

BSN Difference

The BSN degree offered by John Carroll University supports diverse learning styles, and produces nurse professionals who are comfortable with the complexity of modern nursing and health care.

The post How to Prepare for a BSN Program: Know Your Key Competencies, Concepts and Learning Styles first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

That report and several others detail the ways that COVID-19 strained the health care system and everyone involved, especially nurses. Some aspects of the nursing shortage predate the pandemic. Other factors became more visible and acute. During the peak surge of the pandemic, one in six U.S. hospitals reported critical nursing shortages.

Pandemic Effect

Many nurses faced furloughs when elective surgeries were canceled. Significant numbers of late-career nurses chose to retire early. All told, employment levels for registered nurses declined by 3 percent between 2020 and 2021, the largest decline in at least 20 years. Chief nursing officers have consistently reported staffing as their greatest challenge throughout the pandemic, with vacancy rates as high as 30 percent.

As pandemic-related issues continue to recede, educators and policy makers look to reinvigorate the nursing profession and create a more resilient health care system.

Strong Nursing Demand 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that more than 275,000 additional nurses are needed from 2020 to 2030, and that employment opportunities for nurses will grow at 9 percent, faster than all other occupations from 2016 through 2026.

The Importance of a BSN during the Nursing Shortage

In a 2019 report, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing explored the case for why a BSN degree such as that offered by John Carroll University produces a nurse professional with a wider range of critical thinking, leadership, case management, and health promotion skills.

BSN degree holders often received larger sign-on bonuses and first-job pay upgrades — with hospitals recognizing the degree as the equivalent of four years of experience. Baccalaureate-prepared nurses also receive options to practice across a wider variety of inpatient and outpatient settings and roles, including: federal agencies, the military, nursing think-tanks, healthcare foundations, Magnet hospitals, and minority nurse advocacy groups.

These benefits are reflected in an increase in enrollment in BSN programs. That same American Association of Colleges of Nursing report from 2019 found that the number of BSN-prepared nurses is at an all-time high of 56% of all RNs.

Why Specialization Pays

Baccalaureate-prepared nurses achieve a critical first step along a career path that leads to some of the higher paying nurse positions — across direct patient care, administration, education and research. Some potential career specializations include:

1. Pharmaceutical RN 

As a pharmaceutical nurse, you combine the skills of nursing and pharmacology to serve as a critical link in the chain between patients, physicians and effective medication management. Your primary responsibilities include administering medications, monitoring and assessing patients’ responses to treatments, educating patients and their families about proper medication usage, and communicating with healthcare providers regarding patient care. 

2. Informatics Nurse

As an Informatics Nurse, you will work at the confluence of electronic medical records systems, machine learning, and patient care. You will combine nursing science and training with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage, and communicate data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing practice. Working with data and information is inherent to the Nursing Informatics role, regardless of what the job title is.  Informatics Nurses apply data, diagnosis information, and research knowledge as application analysts, project managers, informatics specialists and educators.

3. Adult-Gerontology Nurse

Adult-Gerontology Nurse Practitioners study the physical and mental impacts of aging, and play a role in advising and educating families about care options for their elders. You will develop chronic illness treatment plans — a growing need as about half of U.S. seniors have three or more chronic conditions. AGNPs may decide to become primary care nurse practitioners (AG-PCNP) or acute care nurse practitioners (AG-ACNP). Demand for either specialist reflects an aging United States. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report details how from 2009 to 2019, the population of adults 65 and older grew 36%, to more than 54 million Americans. By contrast, the under-65 population grew just 3%.

Nursing at John Carroll University

John Carroll University’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing, launched in collaboration with Cleveland’s world-class medical institutions (Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and the MetroHealth System), will begin enrolling students for the Fall 2023 semester. Through the BSN program, new teaching and simulation facilities in the Dolan Center for Science and Technology will support a forward-looking, evidence-based approach to nursing education.

JCU is a private Jesuit university located in University Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland.

The post How BSN students can emerge from a nursing shortage in a stronger position. first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

No matter where they work, nurses have been community advocates since the inception of the profession. And in 2023, the nursing profession seeks to fill a growing void for accessibility to healthcare in rural, underserved, and aging populations. 

Take three alternative patient settings where nurses may find themselves in growing sectors, each seeking to provide access to care to diverse patient populations: telehealth, home health, and community-based care. This blog post focuses on telehealth specifically and how nursing plays a crucial role in supplementing, augmenting, and improving accessibility to patient care. 

How Telehealth Nurses Work

The US Health Resources Services Administration defines telehealth as “the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distance clinical health care, patient and professional health-related education, public health and health administration.” Telehealth has grown as a cost-effective, accessible option for healthcare providers to work with patients remotely in a number of ways. 

Telehealth may encompass live, remote care provided synchronously, or remote patient monitoring where a practitioner is able to check in on specific data sent and stored throughout a patient’s day. This data may be manually entered by a patient or even automatically recorded and uploaded through smart devices, like smart glucose and heart monitors. 

Telehealth can include primary care or specialist services. It can also be a tool for remote patient monitoring between in-person visits. Or, like in the Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH) model highlighted in a recent blog post, patients requiring acute care are cared for by a team of healthcare professionals who either visit the patient in their home or connect with them via telehealth on a regular basis. Depending on where and at what level a nurse practices, they may be engaged with patients in any of these formats and settings.

Nurses are able to assist in telehealth by asking important intake and follow-up questions, and everything in between within the scope of the nurses’ practice. Importantly, nurses are able to see more patients with greater efficiency.  

How is Telehealth Improving Patient Care & Access

The largest overall benefit of telehealth to patients is the growth in opportunity to meet with specialists. Those traditionally unable to access specialists, such as those in rural or remote areas who would have otherwise had to drive long distances to meet with their practitioner, those who are homebound, have mobility issues or do not have access to transportation can now meet with some of the best providers in the country virtually. 

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, while an estimated 20 percent of the U.S. population live in rural communities, only about 11 percent of physicians practice in such areas. Furthermore, rural residents are more likely to suffer from heart disease, lung diseases, and receive cancer diagnoses in later stages. Telehealth helps remote individuals access important care, leading to more favorable outcomes. 

Telehealth is also an efficient alternative to get patients in front of healthcare providers and nurses for check-in visits between those where more technological in-person diagnostic tools are required, such as at the beginning of a patient relationship, as a general check-in, and even to do post-op analysis. Telehealth nursing can also focus on working directly with patients for long-term patient wellness, chronic disease self-management and autonomy, education, and overall health.

Nursing at John Carroll University

The John Carroll University bachelor’s degree in nursing helps to-be nurses prepare for the growing models of telehealth practice. The training includes future forward skill development in enhancing patient care and understanding the role of technology and informatics in healthcare. 

JCU is a private Jesuit university located in University Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland.

The post Nursing and healthcare professions utilize Telehealth to improve patient care and access first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

Indeed, completing a nursing program can be challenging. And that’s by design. After all, as nurses play an indispensable role in caring for patients and facilitating positive outcomes for them and their loved ones, they need to know their stuff and be good at their jobs.

But which skills are the most important for nurses to master? Along with clinical skills, soft skills are equally necessary—especially empathy in nursing.

What Makes Empathy in Nursing So Important 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Recent research, meanwhile, has identified three kinds of empathy, including cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy. 

While familiarity with the various types of empathy is recommended, what’s most important to know about empathy is that it’s the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person, see things from their perspective, and understand why they may react in a certain way. 

Given the stressful situations healthcare professionals find themselves in daily, empathy can be a tremendous asset when interacting with fellow members of the patient care team, including doctors and other colleagues. But, of course, empathy in nursing is most valuable in communicating with patients and their families—who are, of course, often under the most stress. 

Research has shown multiple benefits to empathy in healthcare, including better adherence to medications, fewer malpractice lawsuits, fewer mistakes, and higher levels of patient satisfaction—all of which are outcomes healthcare professionals aspire to.

Can Empathy in Nursing Be Developed?

If you are an empathetic person, it will serve you well as a nurse. But if you aren’t, the good news is that you can improve.

For a long time, it was believed that empathy was a personality trait you either possessed or you didn’t. Fortunately, in recent years, research has shown that empathy can be taught and developed over time.

Practices such as reading widely, talking to new people, examining one’s own biases, trying out activities that others engage in to better understand them, and working on projects with other people have been cited as ways to develop this important skill for nurses.

Nursing at John Carroll University

John Carroll University’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing, launched in collaboration with Cleveland’s world-class medical institutions (Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and the MetroHealth System), will begin enrolling students for the Fall 2023 semester. Through the BSN program, new teaching and simulation facilities in the Dolan Center for Science and Technology will support a forward-looking, evidence-based approach to nursing education.

JCU is a private Jesuit university located in University Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland.

The post Why Empathy Is a Skill Nursing Degree Students Need first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.

The nursing profession and Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree programs in Ohio and elsewhere are responding to this important evolution in patient care. 

What is Acute Hospital Care at Home (AHCaH)

In the AHCaH model, patients requiring acute care are cared for by a team of healthcare professionals who either visit the patient in their home or connect with them via telehealth. 

AHCaH was first introduced in the 1990s at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, but didn’t gain wide adoption until the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began providing waivers for AHCaH programs as part of its strategy to increase hospital capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Post-pandemic, CMS has extended the AHCaH waivers, which means that Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover patients in these programs. This extension also has opened the door for additional healthcare organizations to launch AHCaH programs to provide home-based acute care. 

As these programs are specifically for patients in need of acute care, they do not address the needs of patients requiring long-term care, such as that provided through in-home health services or by nursing homes or other residential care facilities. 

Research points to multiple positive outcomes for AHCaH patients including an improved mental state, significant reductions in inpatient-induced delirium, fewer complications from inactivity, and lower 30-day readmission rates. 

The Role of Nurses in Acute Hospital Care at Home

An AHCaH team can incorporate multiple healthcare professionals, including paramedics, physical, occupational or speech therapists, social workers, phlebotomists, patient care assistants, and others. 

Just as with inpatient acute care, nurses are critical to the success of AHCaH engagements. As American Nurse Journal points out, many of these programs also include multiple nursing roles, each of which have multiple duties, including the following:

• Market Recovery Care Coordinators – program marketing, admission screening, arranging transportation, coordinating delivery of medication, equipment, and supplies. 
• Acute Care Registered Nurses – making virtual or daily in-person visits, performing home safety assessments, identifying care barriers and making recommendations, setting up equipment, facilitating escalation of care.
• Nurse Practitioners – conducting daily in-person or virtual visits, managing prescriptions, communicating the treatment plan to the team, facilitating adjustments to treatment plans, consulting with specialists.
• Virtual Care Unit Coordinators – providing virtual support to other team members, coordinating pickup and delivery of medications and equipment, coordinating transportation during care escalations.

Nurses in these roles need knowledge and skills that are specifically suited to providing home-based care. These include exceptional communication skills, technology skills, and the skills needed to conduct assessments, coordinate care, and successfully collaborate with a remote interprofessional team. 

Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs in Ohio and elsewhere are incorporating the development of this knowledge and these skillsets into their curricula to prepare nurses for the demands of their evolving profession. 

These degree programs are recognizing that the future of nursing may be less about working in hospitals, doctors’ offices, or other healthcare facilities, and more about caring for patients where they will be most comfortable and are likely to realize the best outcomes  in their homes. 

Nursing at John Carroll University

John Carroll University’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing, launched in collaboration with Cleveland’s world-class medical institutions (Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, and the MetroHealth System), will begin enrolling students for the Fall 2023 semester. Through the BSN program, new teaching and simulation facilities in the Dolan Center for Science and Technology will support a forward-looking, evidence-based approach to nursing education.

JCU is a private Jesuit university located in University Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland.

The post What Nurses Need to Know About Acute Hospital Care at Home Programs first appeared on Just Imagination Blog.