Letter from CNO, SVP Mairead Hickey
Dear Colleagues:
The ongoing recognition of BWH as one of the country’s best hospitals by national groups that measure health care safety and quality is even more impressive when we think about the acuity, complexity and diversity of our patient population. Our BWH community begins in our immediate neighborhood, extends into the suburbs through a network of community health centers and physicians’ offices and frequently includes patients and families, who come from places throughout the country and the world for the unique, cutting-edge care that is found here. No matter where our patients and families come from, or what circumstances bring them here, nurses at BWH understand that knowing the particular patient and family and working with them to achieve healing, preserve dignity and make complex medical treatments safe and effective, constitute the basis of our practice. This kind of nursing practice contributes to the hospital’s stellar reputation as a center for life-saving cure and excellent care.
In this issue of BWH Nurse, we detail the extraordinary group of advance practice nurses on our staff who provide expert care to diverse patient groups throughout the BWH community on a daily basis. These registered nurses with advanced education, knowledge, skills and expanded scopes of practice hold many different roles, as you will see. You will learn how nurse practitioners in the Weiner Center for Preoperative Evaluation streamline the pre-operative experience of surgical patients. You will read about the cadre of NPs who provide comprehensive, efficient and effective care in inpatient and outpatient clinics and research programs throughout BWH. You also will meet the CRNAs, who administer anesthesia in peri-operative programs as integral members of the surgery team, and you will learn about the large group of nurse midwives who play a crucial role in the care of women of childbearing age. You’ll also hear about the program development work of the psychiatric nursing resource service and the excellent care provided to ostomy patients by the clinical nurse specialists who staff the Ostomy and Wound Clinic at BWH.
This edition also highlights the planning process for the move to the Shapiro Cardiovascular Center which is scheduled to occur in May. Nurses have had a central role in designing every aspect of this new building, including selecting equipment, cardiac monitors, telemetry and patient education systems so that patients and families will be able to receive state-of-the-art cardiovascular care in the most modern, safest and most comfortable environment. This new building is intended to be a model of creating care environments which combine the most advanced medical and surgical care with keeping families together and integrally involved with nurses and physicians as partners in care.
BWH is a busy place with lots going on all the time. I am convinced that you, our incredible nursing staff, help patients and families find their way through our system and make sense of their experience here. For that, I add my voice to that of the entire BWH community and our patients and families, and say, thank you.