Judith Shindul-Rothschild

The university/community partnership: transdisciplinary course development.

This paper describes the process of expanding the knowledge base and clinical practice for students in professional preparation programs in social work, nursing and education. Through a partnership of university faculty and administrators of a private school for students with learning and behavior problems, a transdisciplinary course was designed to address the need for providing future professionals an opportunity to understand multiple perspectives in the design of clinical interventions. The process of defining the course content, identifying appropriate required reading, and building connections to field work was a collaborative effort and less problematic than the logistics of implementation. Negotiating the administrative barriers to interprofessional collaboration involving curriculum innovation was more challenging. Discussion also includes the need for a shared vision and responsibility for improving practice, the practical implications of university funding and the benefits and challenges of transforming current treatment paradigms into one focused on interprofessional care.

Nurse Staffing and Hospital Characteristics Predictive of Time to Diagnostic Evaluation for Patients in the Emergency Department

Introduction: In the 2014 Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance Summit, for the first time, participants recommended tracking nursing and advanced practice nurse hours. Performance data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provides an opportunity to analyze factors associated with delays in emergency care. The purpose of this study was to investigate hospital characteristics associated with time to a diagnostic evaluation in 67 Massachusetts emergency departments from 2013 to 2014. Methods: Covariates significantly correlated with time to diagnostic evaluation, and factors associated with timely care in emergency departments were included in the stepwise linear regression analysis. Differences in nurse staffing and performance measures in trauma and nontrauma emergency departments were examined with analysis of variance and t tests. Results: Two predictors explained 38% of the variance in time a diagnostic evaluation (1): nurse staffing (P < .001) and (2) trauma centers (P < .001). In trauma centers, the time to a diagnostic evaluation significantly increased (P = .042) from 30.2 minutes when a nurse cared for fewer than 11.32 patients in 24 hours to 61.4 minutes when a nurse cared for 14.85 or more patients in 24 hours. Discussion: Efforts to improve patient flow often focus on process interventions such as improved utilization of observation beds or transfers of patients to inpatient units. In this study, time to diagnostic evaluation significantly increased when emergency nurses care for higher numbers of patients. The findings present new evidence identifying the relationship of specific nurse to patient ratios to wait time in emergency departments.

Predictors of excess heart failure readmissions: implications for nursing practice.

In this study of California, Massachusetts, and New York hospitals, 6 factors predicted 27.6% of readmissions for patients with heart failure (HF). We found that higher admissions per bed, teaching hospitals, and poor nurse-patient communication increased HF readmissions. Conversely, the HF readmissions were lower when nurse staffing was greater, more patients reported receiving discharge information, and among hospitals in California. The implications for nursing practice in the delivery of care to patients with HF are discussed.

Patient Turnover and Nursing Employment in Massachusetts Hospitals Before and After Health Insurance Reform: Implications for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

The Affordable Care Act is modeled after Massachusetts insurance reforms enacted in 2006. A linear mixed effect model examined trends in patient turnover and nurse employment in Massachusetts, New York, and California nonfederal hospitals from 2000 to 2011. The linear mixed effect analysis found that the rate of increase in hospital admissions was significantly higher in Massachusetts hospitals (p < .001) than that in California and New York (p = .007). The rate of change in registered nurses full-time equivalent hours per patient day was significantly less (p = .02) in Massachusetts than that in California and was not different from zero. The rate of change in admissions to registered nurses full-time equivalent hours per patient day was significantly greater in Massachusetts than California (p = .001) and New York (p < .01). Nurse staffing remained flat in Massachusetts, despite a significant increase in hospital admissions. The implications of the findings for nurse employment and hospital utilization following the implementation of national health insurance reform are discussed.