| School of Nursing to pair up with Cardinal Health |
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| Written by Matthew Reagan | ||||
| Tuesday, 11 March 2008 04:34 PM | ||||
 The School of Nursing has put an emphasis on researching patient safety through the use of its Smart Hospital and collaboration with a global health care company. In an effort to improve patient safety, the school has partnered with Cardinal Health to create the Nursing Discovery Center. Cardinal Health is a health care product and supply company and is the nineteenth largest corporation in the world, according to Fortune 500 on CNNMoney.com. Patients can face a variety of threatening diseases and potential mistakes during their stay in a hospital, aside from the unfortunate circumstances that bring them there in the first place, according to the Center for Disease Control Web site. Some of the threats patients are exposed to include wrongful medication distribution and hospital acquired infections, said Carolyn Cason, School of Nursing associate dean for research. Cason said the center will serve as a means to ensure patient safety with an emphasis on preventing MSRA, or staph infection, the most likely form of infection to occur at hospitals. IV distribution systems will also be tested and used to allow nurses to correctly program the flow of fluids and medicine to a patient. “Cardinal Health’s mission is very similar to ours — the whole concept of improving safety for patients and improving health care,” she said. “They manufacture equipment that has made very important contributions to patient safety.” Cason said the same equipment will be used in the Smart Hospital, including the PYXIS medicinal distribution system and various infection prevention apparatus. MSRA is one of the most common causes of skin infection and can cause pneumonia, surgical wound infections and bloodstream infections. MSRA occurs most often in patients in hospitals and health care facilities, according to the CDC Web site. Elizabeth Poster, School of Nursing dean, said the center is a symbol of merit for the university. “There is no other entity that Cardinal Health has designated in such a way,” she said. “It is a unique title and it reflects our joint vision of excellence.” Cason said the Smart Hospital and Cardinal Health are in a win-win collaboration in that both sides succeed in accomplishing their goals of research and education. “Because of the shortage of the faculty in schools of nursing, we have to reach out and proceed with the business of research,” she said. “We have state of the science equipment to train students, and in exchange, [Cardinal Health] has an opportunity to work with us on evaluating how people best learn and other ways to improve patient safety.” Nursing junior Chelsea Hoskinson said she has participated in clinical exercises at the Smart Hospital and looks forward to using the Discovery equipment and training. “Infection is the biggest part of education,” she said. “Prevention is the number one thing we need to do.” Views: 3110 | E-mail
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 September 2008 03:37 PM ) | ||||
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