Long-Term Care at St. Luke’s Elmore Improves Satisfaction and Workflow

Long-Term Care at St. Luke’s Elmore has completed their two-year renovation project, which included a complete rehaul of the unit and resident rooms from floor to ceiling.

To create more space in each room, the facility went from 24 rooms to 19. Each room is private, spacious, and set up for ease of living and care. The beautifully redone spaces reflect a modernized touch and a more homelike feel. 

Additionally, the facility has a newly outfitted physical therapy gym with updated equipment. The spacious gym supports optimal physical therapy services to the residents and swing bed patients in the hospital.

Along with these changes to beautify the space, workflow projects investigated how to streamline medication administration in the long-term care setting. With a ratio of 1:19, nurses have been facing many barriers to do their jobs efficiently and effectively, particularly with medication administration.

The current major project for the unit and leadership team is to create a new medication administration workflow with equipment and processes that better align with best practices among long-term care units in the nation.

The residents are happy with the renovation, specifically to the main room where they enjoy meals and activities. Through grant support, residents also enjoy a portable garden and participate in caring for the plants. Overall, the renovation was a success!

Nampa ICU Nurse Investigates Moral Distress Among Peers

It is no secret that nurses across the globe are suffering from burnout, and a significant portion intend to leave the profession. Moral distress contributes to burnout, and one ambitious nurse set out to examine the relationship between self-care, coping resilience and moral distress in critical care nurses.

Brittany Kelly, BSN, RN, an intensive care nurse at St. Luke’s Nampa Medical Center, was selected to participate in the 2021-2022 Nursing Research Fellowship, where she first developed a research study on moral distress. In 2022, she distributed a survey, to be completed anonymously, to all St. Luke’s ICU nurses. Brittany identified noteworthy results that improve our understanding of moral distress in critical care nurses.

Planning and launching one research study during a 15-month fellowship is a remarkable achievement; even more impressively, Brittany has continued to immerse herself in the life of a nurse-researcher. After an invitation by nursing research leadership, Brittany completed a senior fellowship to finish her study.

In that time, she completed a six-month writing workshop and prepared a manuscript for submission to a scholarly journal. Given her performance and enthusiasm, Brittany was selected to present her work at the inaugural 2024 Treasure Valley Research Sharing Conference in Boise.

Brittany was also selected to serve as the Nurse Scientist Apprentice for 2024, where she will gain additional training and receive mentorship from an experienced nurse scientist, Lucy Zhao, PhD, MPaff, RN. Brittany’s passion for professional development and advancing the profession, all while working full-time as a bedside clinician and preceptor (and becoming a first-time mother!), is a testament to nursing excellence.

Burgundy Zone Established in St. Luke’s Boise Emergency Department

Across the health system, St. Luke’s has seen an increase in patients coming into our Emergency Departments with mental health concerns. Along with the escalating patient numbers came an increase in patient elopements and staff injuries.

To address these rising concerns, St. Luke’s Boise Emergency Department has dedicated four rooms for patients with mental health concerns in what is called the “burgundy zone.” This area was retrofitted in July 2023 to make the rooms safer for patients and staff. Unnecessary equipment was removed from each room, including items on walls, and cameras and panic buttons were added./p>

These rooms are in a quieter area of the ED and were painted to set a calming, more peaceful mood. St. Luke’s also added two mental health lead registered nurse positions as well as three certified nursing assistants with additional training to staff this area in partnership with the security team./p>

The mental health lead RNs receive audits from the St. Luke’s accreditation team and work one on one with staff when there are opportunities identified in documentation or care. They also worked with the mental health team to create an algorithm to determine criteria for patient placement to this area./p>

Since implementing the burgundy zone, the Boise ED has had zero elopements and no staff or patient injuries in this area.