2020 - University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing

MU nursing students give up break to help with patient care

From KOMU Channel 8

Link to original post here.

COLUMBIA- MU Health Care’s hospital beds are quickly filling up with patients, which has caused nurses to spread thin, according to a recent press release.

In early December, Robin Harris, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Sinclair School of Nursing, asked MU nursing students to help out over winter break on general care units.

The response was overwhelming. More than 60 Sinclair School of Nursing students stepped forward to give up their winter break and help reduce a patient overload.

“We have these students who want to learn, want to contribute, want to serve their community during a pandemic,” Mary Beck, MU Health Care Chief Nursing Officer said. “They understand this could be their neighbor, their family, their friend. When this is done, they will be able to say, ‘I served, I made a difference.’ We are so overwhelmed by their response. The partnership also goes hand and hand with the school’s new apprenticeship program.

The “Grow Our Own” Registered Nurse Apprenticeship Program is set to launch in the spring semester of 2021.

According to the release, the program targets nursing students from the 25 counties directly served by the University of Missouri Health Care and gives them more opportunities to learn and help out MU Health Care during these times.

“This is good extra clinical experience because we haven’t got to be gotten to be in the hospital as often because of COVID,” senior nursing student Naomi Joy said.

Joy said one issue they are currently running into at MU Health Care is an overflow of ER patients.

“It just makes it a little chaotic, because now we’re kind of playing musical chairs with rooms and trying to make space,” Joy said.

According to MU Health Care’s COVID-19 dashboard, there are 40 inpatients with positive cases and 42 inpatients with pending tests. MU Health Care tests all patients admitted to its hospitals, whether or not they show symptoms.

December 2020 Virtual Graduation Celebration

CONGRATULATIONS! Sinclair School of Nursing has some really fun things in store for you on our Commencement Celebration page. You’ll be able to:

Link to commencement.missouri.edu to see what campus is doing.
You can sign the commencement guest book!
Download fun fillable pages to post or make your own memory sheet.
Download fun stickers and Facebook banners to support your nursing grad.
See our featured Outstanding Graduate, ALEXANDRA KICKERT
Find your name on our virtual program.
Follow what we are posting and sharing on our social media sites.
Graduate Flipbook will be posted and graduate names will scroll at 3 P.M.!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE PAGE!

We hope you have a wonderful day of celebration. Our graduates have worked so hard and deserve so much. All of us at SSON are proud of you and cheering you on until we can meet in person again.

Engaging family caregivers key to coordinated home health care

MU researcher identifies resources to support overburdened family caregivers

Dec. 1, 2020
Contact: Brian Consiglio, 573-882-9144, consigliob@missouri.edu

After Jo-Ana Chase heard her mother had successful heart surgery, she was relieved when her mom was finally discharged from the hospital and sent home to be cared for by her brother. However, Chase quickly learned from her brother that he felt lost on the best ways to care for their mom due to confusing discharge instructions from the hospital and logistical challenges related to home health care services like wound care and medication management.

Jo-Ana Chase is an associate professor in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing.

Motivated by her own family’s struggles navigating the often complicated American health care system, Chase, an associate professor in the University of Missouri’s Sinclair School of Nursing, is working with clinicians and health care providers to better engage family caregivers in providing coordinated care after a loved one is discharged home from the hospital. In a recent study, she sought to better understand the resources family caregivers currently use to help health care providers identify gaps in coverage and recommend resources to assist overburdened caregivers and ultimately improve and better coordinate care.

“The American health care system has been very patient-focused; however, we also need to remember that patients often rely on family for help with their care,” Chase said. “Now that we are starting to recognize how impactful the work is that family caregivers provide, my goal is to better engage these family caregivers and help them access the resources they need to better support the loved ones they care for.”

In her study, Chase interviewed family caregivers about the medical and nursing tasks they completed for a loved one after a hospital-to-home transition, such as treating wounds or giving medication. She found that family caregivers often struggle with these tasks and in navigating the complex health care system; and resources like home health care nurses or aides can serve as a central point-of-contact to improve coordinated care.

“After a patient is discharged from the hospital, a home health care nurse will often come to the patient’s home periodically to check in, make sure the medications are right, evaluate the home for safety, check the patient’s vital signs and assess wounds,” Chase said. “This is an excellent opportunity for the clinicians to work with caregivers to address any questions, challenges, or concerns family caregivers may be having.”

Chase added that while caregivers may receive discharge instructions for providing care after a patient leaves the hospital, the instructions may fail to consider caregivers’ preparedness and various environmental factors, such as what equipment is needed, or which room in a house is best for administering a specific task like changing a bandage. In addition to home health care nurses, primary care providers, social workers, nearby community centers and respite services can also help support and take the load off of overburdened caregivers.

“At some point in our lives, most of us will become a caregiver for someone, whether it is a child, spouse, parent or relative,” Chase said. “So, encouraging the health care system to effectively engage caregivers benefits us all. I hope one day when I am sick and someone has to take care of me, my caregiver doesn’t experience the same challenges my brother did caring for my mom.”

“Family caregivers managing medical and nursing tasks in the post-acute home health care setting” was recently published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology. Funding for the study was provided by the Eugenie and Joseph Doyle Research Partnership Fund of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency.

MU Sinclair School of Nursing

MU School of Nursing Trailblazers Impact Senior Care During Global Pandemic

Article by BioNexus|KC
See original article here.

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A good partnership is often greater than the sum of its individual parts. For Dr. Amy Vogelsmeier, Associate Professor at the University of Missouri (MU) Sinclair School of Nursing, and Dr. Lori Popejoy, Associate Dean for Innovation and Partnerships and Associate Professor at the MU Sinclair School of Nursing, their research symbiosis has been a major driver in improving elder care across the state of Missouri. Since the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, they have turned their work towards preparing and equipping nursing homes to better protect the health and safety of residents and employees. By focusing on the nursing home patients most at risk during the pandemic, their impact is exponential and reaches both patients and their caretakers.

Because of their shared experience in nursing, Vogelsmeier and Popejoy can create and lead better process changes for elder care in hospitals and nursing home facilities. They each have their own areas of interest. Vogelsmeier has worked to highlight the unique contribution of registered nurses in nursing homes and identify and implement best medication safety practices. For Popejoy, her focus is on care coordination, transitional care, and discharge planning.

Working collaboratively through the Missouri Quality Initiative Program (MOQI), a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) funded innovation project, they studied the influence of advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) and improvement of nursing home systems of care delivery on reduction of avoidable hospitalizations. Both have also been part of the Quality Improvement Program for Missouri (QIPMO) since its inception in the late 1990s. QIPMO is a collaboration between the Sinclair School of Nursing and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services supporting nursing facilities by providing access to Gerontological nurse experts, guiding best practices to improve care delivery and outcomes for nursing home residents.

At the beginning of the pandemic, limited access to personal protective equipment (PPE) was the biggest concern for nursing home staff. Working in collaboration with QIPMO, “We were able to collaborate with various community organizations to help QIPMO distribute more than 3,000 face shields to nursing homes throughout the state,” Popejoy said. The challenge went beyond PPE though, as nursing home residents were being isolated more often, reducing or eliminating opportunities to dine in groups, share social activities, or invite outside visitors inside the facilities.

Between the MOQI and QIPMO, 500 Missouri nursing homes were provided with guidance and support for staff and administrators to navigate and implement changing COVID-19 infection control practices to better protect their residents. “The main goal of our response effort was to make sure nursing home residents are staying as safe as possible during this very traumatic and challenging experience,” Popejoy said.

With some their MOQI colleagues, the duo has developed a business called NewPath Health Solutions that works to carry forward innovations developed from the School of Nursing to continue after federal and grant funding support has ended.

Other projects Popejoy and Vogelsmeier are involved in are envisioning the use of healthcare technology. Vogelsmeier is excited by a future in which registered nurses and APRNs play a significant role in improving the future of safe senior care. Popejoy’s role at MU as the Associate Dean of Innovation and Partnerships helps advance technology such as sensor-based technologies across settings. “It’s hard to keep health system innovation functioning and moving, so this role was developed to keep projects moving forward when there is no longer grant funding to keep these projects alive,” Popejoy said.

The two of them have been long-time friends and colleagues likely in part because their strengths and weaknesses are complementary. “My ability to be strategic and Lori’s ability to be creative and think outside the box work together to get it done,” Vogelsmeier said. Both enjoy living in central Missouri, being outside with their families, and traveling.

The impact from COVID-19 was an immediate concern for both of them. “When we first heard about the disease in Washington state, my heart sunk thinking about how bad it could be,” Popejoy said. “It was like watching a tsunami coming and people were oblivious until it hit and then suddenly were lost as to what to do next,” Vogelsmeier recalled. “Almost like it didn’t exist until it hit the crisis point.” However, as the country has gotten further into the pandemic, these two have seen improvements. “Everything we know about this disease is constantly changing as we gear up to help them face these challenges, but the problems seem to be somewhat more manageable now,” Vogelsmeier said.

For both professors, the drive to improve senior lives and the careers of nurses across Missouri is motivation enough but faced with a once in a century pandemic, they both have responded. Between the state quality care initiatives and support programs and the outreach during COVID-19, Vogelsmeier and Popejoy’s impact is bigger, together.

Quality Improvement Program for Missouri (QIPMO) Selected as a Health Quality Innovator of the Year

Award recognizes QIPMO’s dedication to improving health in Missouri

Columbia, MO —November, 19 2020—Quality Improvement Program for Missouri (QIPMO), has been recognized as a 2020 Health Quality Innovator of the Year. The Health Quality Innovator Awards are sponsored by the Health Quality Innovators’/Health Quality Innovation Network’s (HQIN) during their annual recognition program. This year, health care providers and organizations receiving this award are being honored for their innovative approaches or technologies to address COVID-19.

QIPMO quickly responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by helping nursing homes in Missouri understand volumes of information as it was disseminated about the virus and help nursing homes implement actions to keep residents and staff safe. The group immediately went virtual, increasing the frequency of its statewide Administrator Support Group and DON Support Group meetings to understand and assimilate new guidance and regulations regarding COVID-19. The QIPMO team distilled information into manageable learning sessions and held open forums for nursing homes to ask questions and share experiences. These statewide virtual meetings focus not just on regulation but also on broader aspects affected by the pandemic such as staff and residents’ health and safety, both physically and mentally. “It’s an honor and a privilege to serve the caregivers of this state,” replied QIPMO Leader Nicky Martin MPA, LNHA about the impact the team is making on the state.

The QIPMO team has been at the educational and informational forefront of this fight, doing whatever it takes to get information where it needs to go. The weekly webinars have, since March 2020, had over 10,000 attendees. QIPMO nurses and coaches have created assessment tools recommended in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Toolkit on State Actions to Mitigate COVID-19 Prevalence in Nursing Homes, reporting algorithms, tools for practical clinical management of COVID-19, mental and emotional staff support, and a variety of other resources available for free at www.nursinghomehelp.org. To date, the QIPMO team has fielded nearly 10,000 phone calls and emails from nursing homes since COVID-19 hit our state, providing answers and reassurance.

The team currently consists of five registered nurses and three licensed administrator coaches employed to assist in nursing home consultations throughout Missouri. Nurses and coaches field calls and emails, provide educational in-services to disseminate best practices, and do on-site visits, creating connections that go beyond regulatory compliance while also serving as colleagues and experts in long-term nursing care. In 2019, the QIPMO program provided over 750 site visits to over 400 skilled nursing facilities in the state and made over 600 different facility contacts.

“Our 2020 Health Quality Innovators are on the front lines of COVID-19,” said Donald A. Glozer, MHA, FACHE, President & CEO of Health Quality Innovators (HQI). “They are finding innovative solutions to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus while ensuring the safety and well-being of their patients, residents, staff and communities.”

For administrators and directors of nursing, QIPMO has been called their “ace in the hole.” Exhausted, afraid, bogged down with regulations and a shortage of PPE, staff in our long-term care homes know they can always call on QIPMO to provide clarity, emotional support, and whatever PPE can be located to be delivered to their door. Nursing homes are not like hospitals or clinics—they don’t have vast support systems for staff or logistics—they are all-in-one businesses who literally have lives depending on them. QIPMO gives those caregivers someone to depend on. During the past few months, QIPMO staff have delivered everything from goodie bags and PPE to virtual hugs via texts and numerous hours of simply listening.

“We’re incredibly proud for the QIPMO Program to be recognized as a Health Quality Innovator of the Year. This is truly a collaborative effort among an incredible team of people working to provide answers and reassurance to long-term care providers in Missouri which facilitates improved quality care and outcomes for long-term care residents in Missouri’s nursing homes,” says QIPMO’s founder Dr. Marilyn Rantz, RN, PhD, FAAN, Curators’ Professor Emerita at the Sinclair School of Nursing, University of Missouri.

To learn more, please visit https://hqin.org/hqi-announces-2020-health-quality-innovators-of-the-year/

For More information about the Quality Improvement Program of Missouri, visit, https://nursinghomehelp.org/qipmo-program/

About HQIN

Led by Health Quality Innovators and its quality improvement partners, the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence, Kansas Foundation for Medical Care and the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative, HQIN is the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina and Virginia. To learn more visit https://www.hqin.org.