Mary
May
August 2011
Mary
May
,
RN, BSN, ONC, CMSRN
Ortho/Surgical
UnityPoint Health - Des Moines
Des Moines
,
IA
United States
Mary has many years of experience as a front line staff nurse at Iowa Health Des Moines. She has been a C.A.P. nurse for many years and is the Unit Based Educator for 2 North at Iowa Lutheran Hospital. She has also been an active member of the Iowa Health Des Moines Pain steering Committee. I have observed Mary caring for patients on 2North; she consistently demonstrates our CORE values of compassion, openness, respect and excellence in her interactions with patients as well as physicians and other staff.
Mary May proved herself to be an extraordinary nurse when she agreed to be a primary member of the team developing an alternative to the PCA for managing pain in patient’s that are cognitively impaired. She did this even as her colleagues voiced concerns that it would be more work to obtain orders from the physician and would take even more additional time to administer the medication in this way. Mary did this because she knew it was the right thing to do for her patients. She could see that it would give patients a more steady state of medication in the blood stream thus more effective pain relief and ultimately prevent a severe state of delirium in many of these patients with all the attendant complications. She demonstrates extraordinary compassion in caring for one of the most vulnerable patient populations, the cognitively impaired older adult. While some had concerns about how the alternative order set would affect the nurses’ time Mary forged ahead because she knew it was the right thing and would achieve the best outcomes for these patients.
Mary actively worked with the inter-professional team to develop the PCA Alternative order set. She was integral to the process of gaining approval from the DMOS surgeons to trial it on their hip fracture patients; it was her involvement and their trust in her as an excellent orthopedic surgical nurse that convinced them. She then garnered support from her manager and supervisor to trial the order set on 2 North.
Mary worked hard with me to create an educational program for the RN staff on her unit. She then set about educating her nurse colleagues and convincing them to try a different technique for assessing and managing pain in the cognitively impaired older patient. Together we developed a paper assessment and documentation form to ensure that nurses were completing the appropriate assessment and utilizing the sedation scale to help make certain that the patient safely receives enough, but not too much pain medicine.
When there was a glitch with the order set in the transition from IV medication to oral medication Mary was immediately consulting with pharmacy to make appropriate changes so that this transition would happen more efficiently. To date the order set has been successfully used on six patients. The goal is to trial on ten patients, then we will evaluate and hopefully make the order set available house wide. It is her compassion for her patients and wanting to provide the best evidence based care to achieve the best outcomes and her motivation for excellence that makes Mary May a worthy candidate for the DAISY Award.
Mary May proved herself to be an extraordinary nurse when she agreed to be a primary member of the team developing an alternative to the PCA for managing pain in patient’s that are cognitively impaired. She did this even as her colleagues voiced concerns that it would be more work to obtain orders from the physician and would take even more additional time to administer the medication in this way. Mary did this because she knew it was the right thing to do for her patients. She could see that it would give patients a more steady state of medication in the blood stream thus more effective pain relief and ultimately prevent a severe state of delirium in many of these patients with all the attendant complications. She demonstrates extraordinary compassion in caring for one of the most vulnerable patient populations, the cognitively impaired older adult. While some had concerns about how the alternative order set would affect the nurses’ time Mary forged ahead because she knew it was the right thing and would achieve the best outcomes for these patients.
Mary actively worked with the inter-professional team to develop the PCA Alternative order set. She was integral to the process of gaining approval from the DMOS surgeons to trial it on their hip fracture patients; it was her involvement and their trust in her as an excellent orthopedic surgical nurse that convinced them. She then garnered support from her manager and supervisor to trial the order set on 2 North.
Mary worked hard with me to create an educational program for the RN staff on her unit. She then set about educating her nurse colleagues and convincing them to try a different technique for assessing and managing pain in the cognitively impaired older patient. Together we developed a paper assessment and documentation form to ensure that nurses were completing the appropriate assessment and utilizing the sedation scale to help make certain that the patient safely receives enough, but not too much pain medicine.
When there was a glitch with the order set in the transition from IV medication to oral medication Mary was immediately consulting with pharmacy to make appropriate changes so that this transition would happen more efficiently. To date the order set has been successfully used on six patients. The goal is to trial on ten patients, then we will evaluate and hopefully make the order set available house wide. It is her compassion for her patients and wanting to provide the best evidence based care to achieve the best outcomes and her motivation for excellence that makes Mary May a worthy candidate for the DAISY Award.