Robert Fisher
Staff Reporter
BARRY’S BAY – The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) announced that St. Francis Memorial Hospital (SFMH) in Barry’s Bay has become a Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO). SFMH was one of 17 health-care institutions joining the program at an event in Mississauga last Thursday.
Dr. Doris Grinspun, chief executive officer (CEO) of the RNAO said the program trains health-care professionals in the use of evidence in day-to-day health care and is a process on continual learning to update knowledge as new evidence comes to light.
Grinspun said, “the guidelines are produced using a very rigorous methodology,” and are, “well-respected around the world.”
The program also measures outcomes to gauge improvements in patient health compared to before the guidelines being implemented.
The CEO gave an example of an older patient who may come to the hospital with delirium or confusion. She said there can be multiple causes for those symptoms and the processes the program implements work to find the correct reason for the symptom efficiently. What she referred to as patient transition is another area where the program tries to improve outcomes. Patient transition is the term for moving people from the emergency department to an in-patient room or from hospital to long-term care, as examples. By improving the transition process, she said, patient and family satisfaction improves. There may be fewer outbursts or disputes. “They have a better experience and are more at peace,” Grinspun explained.
She stressed that measuring outcomes isn’t a competition between health-care providers, it’s about measuring within the organization against previous results to gauge successes. There are provincial metrics, as well, so health-care institutions can find out how they compare to the province generally.
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