MAY 2013 • PROMISING PRACTICES

Using a comprehensive school health model to guide them, public health nurses in B.C.’s Cowichan Valley collaborated with school administrators and teachers to address a major health concern in the community. Out of this collaboration, the PHNs created two in-class programs aimed at changing attitudes about teen tobacco use.

MARCH 2013 • PROMISING PRACTICES

Although more children with special care needs are surviving into adulthood, services are not always in place to support them once they become adults. As recently as 2006, there was no adult cecostomy program in Ontario

JANUARY 2013 • PROMISING PRACTICES

Diabetes educators at the Credit Valley Hospital adapted their approach to accommodate increases in the numbers of patients and families interested in starting pump therapy

OCTOBER 2012 • PROMISING PRACTICES

St. Michael’s Hospital (SMH) is a major tertiary and quaternary referral centre with 500 acute adult inpatient beds serving a marginalized inner-city population in downtown Toronto. Demonstrating that they engage in best practices to provide quality patient care is a key corporate imperative for SMH’s nurses. Results of a 2011 study on the use of clinical performance data (e.g., data on nursing-sensitive outcomes such as fall rate and pressure ulcer rate) revealed that nurses often did not receive information on the impact of care on their patients and that they were interested in knowing more about it (Jeffs et al., 2012). To respond to this gap, SMH’s nursing professional practice portfolio created the Care Utilizing Evidence (CUE) initiative. This is a two-pronged strategy involving a dashboard that visually displays performance data associated with nursing care and a sequential implementation plan with a pilot phase followed by hospital-wide rollout. The overall goal is to engage front-line nurses in interpreting performance data and for nurses and their unit leaders to use this data to either sustain or improve nursing practice to achieve quality patient care.

JUNE 2012 • PROMISING PRACTICES

Winnipeg’s Seven Oaks General Hospital (SOGH) has a high percentage of older nurses and other health-care professionals. Of 1,547 health-care staff in 2008, close to half were over the age of 45; of this group, 32 per cent were over the age of 50 and five per cent were eligible for retirement (referred to as “Magic 80” — their age plus years of service equals 80 or more). As these older workers move toward retirement, SOGH has been challenged to find new and innovative ways to tap into this pool of experience, not only to address labour shortages but also to retain the knowledge and skills these workers will take with them when they retire.