Liz Unruh (Host): Hello, listeners, and thank you for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Liz Unruh. And joining me today is ErikaOhlendorf, who is our Director of Nursing and our Magnet Program Director here at Riverside. Thanks for joining us today.

Erika Ohlendorf: Thanks for having me.

Host: Yeah. So today, we're going to talk about something that's very exciting. We just received our fourth Magnet designation, so that means that we've been Magnet-designated since 2011. Before we jump into our topic and why that's such an important thing for our patients, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role here?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. I've been with Riverside since 2014. I started as a bedside nurse and have moved up in various leadership roles, before taking on the director of nursing just last year. But prior to that, I was over our Magnet program and continued that for this designation. And that role, being over the Magnet program, is really ensuring that we are meeting all of the standards of the American Nursing Credentialing Center who bestows that designation to us, and makes sure that we follow all of the standards and expectations, and meet all of the deadlines of the program and see it through the whole process. So, lots of work from an entire team that goes into the designation, but my role was to make sure that we met all of the requirements.

Host: Yeah. That's a great—and it sounds like a huge undertaking, and there's a great team behind you to make sure those documents are ready to go. It just occurred to me that this is not your first time on the podcast. You previously joined us when we received our third Magnet designation. So, welcome back.

I'm going to jump into my questions here. So, Riverside has now earned their Magnet designation for the fourth time. And for someone in our community who's hearing that, what does it really mean for the care they receive when they walk through our doors?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. Really for someone who's coming to Riverside for care, what's so important about a Magnet designation is what it means. With Magnet, there's something we have to speak to, which are called empirical outcomes. And I like to call those the so-whats of Magnet. It's the so-what you did this thing, but what happened because you did that thing? What is the data behind what you did and how we improved care for patients? So, it's really about driving best practice in healthcare. A huge focus on nursing, but also with the interdisciplinary team. So, everyone who's caring for you, whether it be in the hospital, whether it be at an ambulatory care setting, in one of our clinics, it's across the entire continuum of care that we're ensuring we are keeping everyone connected and really getting those outcomes of best care possible.

Host: Yeah. I think that's a great thing to remember that, you know, your care team, even if you've been in the hospital, it also includes your primary care providers, your specialist, all of those people. And having a high level that you're trying to achieve of the type of care is really important. So when someone's choosing care close to home, like coming to Riverside, why does this Magnet designation matter?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. Being a Magnet-designated hospital, what's really cool on the ANCC's website, you can actually pull up a map of all of the Magnet-designated hospitals in the entire nation. And only about 10% of all hospitals achieve Magnet designation. And when you look at that map and you look at Illinois specifically, you'll see clusters of Magnet-designated hospitals where you would expect to see clusters of Magnet-designated hospitals. And I mean that by some of the larger major academic medical centers. And then, you look at the map, and you can find us here in Kankakee, and we are the area's only Magnet-designated hospital. So, it shows a commitment by our organization to providing the best care possible to the community that we serve every day.

Host: It's really amazing to think about that only 10% of hospitals receive this recognition, and it really shows the dedication of our staff in improving outcomes for our patient population. This year, we were recognized for a few things, so preventing infections, improving patient safety across all of our inpatient units. Can you explain how that shows up as, like, a real patient experience? Like, what someone might see?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. So, some of the things we have to submit to are our data outcomes for what are called nursing-sensitive indicators. So, these are data outcomes that nursing has a direct impact on. And a lot of that is hospital-acquired infections and what we do to prevent those. And we received exemplars, which we show out of all magnet hospitals what is best practice. And we were given exemplars for those related to preventing infections of hospitalized patients.

So, that's really an amazing feat, because we have to meet a certain standard for being magnet. But to receive an exemplar means we went above and beyond what just the basic magnet standard is, and we're even better than that in preventing hospital-acquired infections, which is a huge deal for our patients in ensuring that when you come to the hospital. Our goal is to not have any negative impact to your health while you're with us, but ensure that you do get better and you're receiving the highest quality of care possible

Host: Yeah. So, sometimes when we talk about things like preventing infections or even like reducing falls, it can feel like those are kind of behind the scene measures, like things that we hear about. But why are those important for patients and their families?

Erika Ohlendorf: Really, what's most important is the longer you're in the hospital, the more at risk you are for a hospital-acquired condition. So, our goal is to get you through your hospital stay as quickly as possible, but with that best care. And for our patients, it's making sure that we are doing these best practices and not prolonging your stay. And the evidence and research shows that hospital-acquired conditions prolong your stay. They increase mortality. They have huge impacts on healthcare as a whole, but they have huge impact on patients and their families.

Our goal is to get you back to where you were before you were in the hospital, and hospital-acquired conditions have a big impact on that not being the case. If you come from home and you want to go back home, that's what we want to help you do. And when hospital-acquired conditions occur, patients don't generally get to go back home because they need extensive care, and that's why it's our goal to reduce and eliminate those. So, having exemplars in those areas definitely shows our commitment to that.

Host: Yeah. That's definitely really important. I know one of the other areas that we were recognized for was improving emergency department access. A few years back now, we went through the huge renovation of our ER and now have a state-of-the-art, and access to great care in our emergency department. The thing that we were recognized for was fewer patients leaving before being seen. Why is this such an important measure in our community?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. The left without being seen metric is such a challenging one in the current state of healthcare. When you need emergency services, that's not planned. That's not something that you can schedule in advance, you can't prepare for. When you need that service, you need it now, and having that ability to provide that care immediately is so crucial.

And so, left without being seen is ensuring that the patient who walks through our door into the ER is triaged, is seen by a provider, is treated, and then discharged by the facility. Left without being seen is tallied when someone actually comes to the ER, gets tired of waiting and leaves before their needs are met.

And so, our team has done such an amazing job ensuring that we have all of the resources needed, that we can get care to our patients and really reduce that number of left without being seen to be a level of an exemplar and outperforming national metrics in that category. So, great work to the entire emergency department team to ensure that when you need care, we will be here for you.

Host: Yeah, I think that's important because, like you said, in an emergency, you need that now. So if you have to leave and drive to the next ER, that could be a couple hours before you're even seen. So, it's great that we have resources in place to make sure that fewer patients are leaving before being seen.

One of the other areas that we received recognition in was for work with behavioral health and medication management. I know we're currently undergoing a huge behavioral health renovation on our inpatient units, and that's such a big area of need right now is behavioral health. But can you talk a little bit about that work that was done?

Erika Ohlendorf: Yeah. This honestly might be one of the most exciting things that we got to feature. It actually wasn't even in our document. The timeline of our document, we weren't able to submit this, but it was something we were able to highlight during our site visit. So, part of the Magnet-designated process is we have appraisers come on site and actually meet our staff for three days. And they had the opportunity to see a presentation by some of our newly licensed nurses on our mental health specialty unit, which services our adolescents that need mental health services.

And part of our program for newly licensed nurses is we have a Vizient Nurse Residency Program. And that program requires everyone who goes through it completes an evidence-based practice project. And evidence-based practice is already proven in research, and it's something that hospitals apply because it's the best practice. It's the gold standard of care for patients. And our mental health adolescent team saw this opportunity to create a program to reduce PRN medications and restraints in mental health patients.

And by creating this positive environment, it allows these patients to recover faster. A lot of times, mental health has a stigma and an association that what's going on when it is an illness, and we need to treat it as such and make sure that we're meeting the patient's needs. And it's as simple for some of these patients as "Did they shower today? And how do we reward and create that positive behavior program?" And that's what they did, is they did this positive reinforcement program, which then had these adolescents participating more in therapies, participating more in group, and having better outcomes, and getting back to their family and getting back to their normal routines, getting back to school, not being hospitalized, not having prolonged hospital stays because they needed medications, and because they had these more acute needs. So, it really is an amazing program and really showing how best practices in every specialty of healthcare really do make a difference.

Host: Yeah, I think that's a great example of a really specific way that we've taken evidence-based learnings and applied them here at Riverside. We're going to take a quick break to talk about primary care.

At Riverside, our primary care providers are right here in your community, offering personalized care for you and your family, close to home and connected to specialists and services you may need, from annual checkups and preventative screenings to managing everyday concerns.

Having a primary care provider means having someone who knows you, listens to you, and helps you stay well through every stage of life, because remarkable care should never be out of reach. Remarkable care, right where you live. To find a primary care provider who's right for you and your family, visit myrhc.net/acceptingnew.

And back to our questions here, just a couple left that I have. Magnet is often described as a nursing recognition, but we know it takes a full team, as we previously mentioned. How does this designation reflect the experience that patients have with every person they encounter during their healthcare journey with us?

Erika Ohlendorf: That's honestly what is so great about Magnet, is they don't want it to just be about nurses. Yes, it is from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, so everyone's like, "Oh, it's nursing excellence. It's just about nurses." But it really is so much more than that, because you can't have healthcare with just nurses.

You need an entire interprofessional team caring for you to meet all of your needs, whether that be the therapy team, the pharmacy team, respiratory therapy, but housekeeping, dietary, nutrition services, the behind-the-scenes of the facilities and maintenance. There's just so much that goes into care of an individual and meeting all of those needs that we have to ensure that we have that collaborative team approach, and Magnet requires that. In the document we submit, we have to talk about how we have interprofessional team relationships and what that works looks like, how we collaborate together to meet the needs of our patients, how we use all of these different areas to ensure we are doing what's best for patients and meeting all of those needs.

And during site visit, the appraisers even meet with that entire team, and I didn't get to be in the room. I could not be in the room during site visit, which was really hard for me because I wanted to hear what was being said. But I heard afterwards, that was one of the best sessions, was all of the different team members that came together to share how we work together every single day to ensure we are providing remarkable care.

Host: Yeah. I think it's a great testament to the staff and the interdisciplinary, collaboration we have here, and knowing that you have that continuity of care from the inpatient units to outpatient across the board. I think that's really important for our patients here in town. when we spoke before, we talked about Magnet being the gold standard in nursing. We've now earned Magnet four times. What does that say about the consistency of care at Riverside?

Erika Ohlendorf: It really says that we are consistent in providing the best care possible. And they always say with every Magnet designation, it gets harder. Because when you start with your first designation, you have how many opportunities of improving your care?

Well, now, with this fourth designation, when we received exemplars for outperforming benchmarks for the entire timeframe of our designation, well, you can't get any better than that. So, how do you take it to the next level every single time and show that commitment and show we can do more, we can do better?

And I think that's the beauty of healthcare, is there's changes always, and so we're always process improving and how can we do better. And it's so important to look at those things. But it is harder. Because when you're already at such a high standard of care, how do you move forward and how do you keep making it even better? And that's just something that we are continued to be committed to, to ensure that whatever it may be, we are providing that highest standard of care.

Host: Yeah. I think that highest standard of care is really the goal. We want to make sure that our patients feel like they're being well taken care of and that they want to come back to us when they have a healthcare need.

So, my last question for you is, what are you most proud of when you think about our fourth Magnet designation?

Erika Ohlendorf: This designation has been so amazing for me. Like I've said, I've been with Riverside since 2014. I've been a part of our second, third, and fourth designations. Our second designation as a bedside nurse in the ICU and seeing what it meant to be a Magnet nurse. Our third designation, I oversaw our site visit, so kind of coming in at the end of designation. And this one I got to see from start to finish. And what really makes me the most proud is how encompassing it was of the entire team and the entire organization.

I've heard from so many people that they felt a part of it, that they felt they were involved, and it wasn't just something that is about the hospital, that we were inclusive of all areas of nursing, our advanced practice nurses, our bedside care nursing, our nursing leaders, our ambulatory care nurses.

I think what's amazing about our ambulatory care clinics is we serve four counties with over 50 clinics that have nurses in them. How do you get that many people in that many locations together providing high practice standards in similar but different settings? And we've been able to do that.

So for me, it was really amazing to see all of nursing come together. And when this document, it's 113 sources of evidence that we submitted, and all areas of nursing were included, and so many people pitched in to make the document a success. And the document is just a small part of what it is. It was just finding pieces of what we do.

And I always say, we don't do things because we're Magnet. We're Magnet because of the things we do. And it's our daily practice to provide this best care. It wasn't something extra. It wasn't something, "Oh, we have to do this to get Magnet." It was just what we do every day in providing that remarkable care, and it's so hard to just say like, "Oh, this is the one thing that makes me the most proud," because It makes me so incredibly proud to be a nurse at Riverside and to be a nurse leader at Riverside, to be able to continue this and to continue to support our nurses to ensure that we continue this and get our fifth designation in 2030.

Host: Yeah. That's a great, great goal. And thank you so much for sharing all of your insights on how Magnet really impacts our patients. and thanks for joining us today.

Thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast with Riverside's Director of Nursing and Magnet Program Director, Erika Ohlendorf, and your host, Liz Unruh. To learn more about the remarkable care provided at Riverside, visit riversidehealthcare.org.