Episode Transcript
Announcer: We're your daily dose of science, conversation, medicine. This is The Scope, University of Utah Health Sciences Radio.
Interviewer: Nurses Week is a great opportunity to celebrate nursing and all the great work nurses do, and here at TheScopeRadio.com, University of Utah Health Sciences Radio, we wanted to explore the ways nurses make a difference here at University of Utah Health Care. Dr. Sean Mulvihill is the CEO of University of Utah Medical Group. Let's go back to your residency and training for a second, Dr. Mulvihill. What impact did nurses have on you?
Dr. Mulvihill: I trained in the early 1980s in surgery and it was really an eye-opening experience for me to go from sort of a naive medical student to a relatively senior resident during those years and see the impact that nurses had on the care that we gave to our patients.
What always struck me is that our team would come and round on the patients for a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes at the end of the day, and the patient's nurse, though, was there all day long, most of the time at the bedside. What I learned in that experience was that the nurses had enough time with those patients to really understand who they were, what their human condition was, what their social circumstances were, their family, their likes, their dislikes, and some of the fears that they had about getting through whatever medical condition we were treating.
Medical training is complicated. There's a lot to learn, so as young doctors we're focused on really mastering the technical aspects of our field, whether it's the knowledge base or the technical issues of doing surgery. There's almost not enough time in the day to really explore some of those human dimensions of caring for people with a serious illness, and what the nurses I interacted with taught me is that that's really a critical important part of the ultimate recovery of the patient.
Interviewer: Also it sounds like they were a great source of information if you needed to know something. You could get a quick answer, you know, figure out what's going on.
Dr. Mulvihill: In my prior role as a department chair I used to tell our trainees pretty explicitly that there's a lot of stuff our nursing staff knows because they've been through it many, many times before. We have very experienced nurses in our system and many of our young doctors come straight out of the training ranks. They're an intern in their first month of clinical duties and they really haven't even seen some of these problems before, so understanding where to ask for advice, being able to understand that we're talking about team-based care today as our model for success in our organization is really important. We need to celebrate the participation of all members of the team at what we're calling "top-of-license practice." There's a lot of stuff we can learn from each other along the way.
Interviewer: It sounds like nurses are very integral to the education of young doctors as well, from what you're saying.
Dr. Mulvihill: There is absolutely no question about that.
Interviewer: What role do nurses play in our institution and how would you describe their importance?
Dr. Mulvihill: Interviewer, I think we really have had an amazing journey as University of Utah Health Care in improving the quality of the services that we provide to patients and improving the patient's view of what we call exceptional patient experience. As you look at the dimensions of how that has happened, how have we improved quality, how have we improved the patient experience, a lot of the credit falls on our nursing staff of really helping us focus on the kind of problems that we all share a responsibility for solving.
How do we eliminate hospital-acquired infections? How do we make the care of the patient more friendly to them along the way? You know, we all play a role, obviously. Doctors, nurses, technicians, everybody plays a role, but the front line staff that are there at the bedside day in and day out really are key drivers of the quality of the care that we provide. And the expertise of our nursing workforce, their commitment to patient care, their commitment to quality has been what I consider a major driver of our success as a high quality healthcare delivery system.
Interviewer: Do you have any advice for nurses just getting started in our organization, maybe some insights as to the culture here and how they can succeed?
Dr. Mulvihill: Absolutely. I think for a young nurse starting out in his or her practice, I would say one of the most important things is try to spend as much time as you can at the bedside one-on-one with the patient, learn who that patient is, learn about their hopes and fears and really participate in a direct way with their care.
Our regulatory environment today unfortunately produces a lot of demands on us to do paperwork and to fulfill some certain obligations of being off at a computer terminal filling out forms or doing some of the administrative work that is necessary for patient care. But really, the true mark of a successful healthcare organization is that bedside nursing, to say, "I'm there with the patient helping them get through this difficult illness."
Interviewer: We are celebrating National Nurses Week, so here's your opportunity to say thank you. What would you like to say?
Dr. Mulvihill: Well, Interviewer, I would just say exactly that. I want to thank the nurses that work in our system. I want to encourage them to say this is a forward-thinking organization, that we are committed to having the very highest quality of medical care, the very highest quality of nursing care, and ultimately the very best population health that we can achieve for the people that we serve and they're a critical part of that.
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