Thursday July 21, 2011 I completed my final 3 hours of my 170 placement at St Michael's Hospital (SMH), working with Lianne Jeffs - Director of Nursing/Clinical Research - and Kirsten Martin - Research Manager. The placement was fantastic, SMH is a urban acute care medical centre and academic hospital. They are a major trauma centre, and they play a key role in delivery of care to the underserved populations of downtown Toronto. The organization has a fantastic culture and is filled with great people.

I first met Lianne when doing and interview for Nursing Ideas. Her work was at the time was focused on improving patient safety and quality improvement by getting clinical nurses conducting research. I thought she was a fantastic leader, intelligent, well grounded in her subject and passionate about her work work. I had to delay my final placement due to writing the book, however, we were able to arrange a placement in the spring semester (May - June).

I spent the semester working exploring the ways that continuous feedback systems can be used to sustain best practice initiatives based on quality improvement methods. Traditionally quality improvement projects take measurements before, during and after change. However, the focus is on the processes that are supposed to be influenced by the change project. If you stop measuring changes how can you tell if it is being sustained, and when you focus on other measures how can you tell it does not detract from other patient safety outcomes?

The long term goal would be to develop feedback mechanisms for all clinical units that would reflect clinical outcomes of patients, which could be used by clinicians, managers and senior leaders. To lay the ground work for this my time was spent on an environmental assessment to develop a evidence-based strategy for feedback data to nurses.

Research poster

 

I was a bit disappointed to finish at SMH, but I might be back there in the fall if I can find a clinical position. Mainly, because after spending a few months reading about creating and implementing feedback systems I'm done just as the project will be switching to the pilot phase. The other reason is I had a very hectic and scattered spring. I spent half of May traveling to conferences and for consulting work. I was then away for part of June and then finally got settled for the last few weeks of the semester. I did get all the work done, but I would have loved to push it further, if only time was not a finite resource.

Anyway, long story short, it was a great learning opportunity and I did learn a lot. I am extremely excited to be finishing my Masters of Nursing, which will be finished officially as of July 26th, 2011 and convocation will be in November. I can't wait. What is next? Well, I am certain of a few things, it is already shaping up to be an exciting year (my year starts in September, school habit) already, I just hope that I can find clinical work without to many problems.

Be Sociable, Share!