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214 E. 23 St. Cheyenne, WY 82001
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CHEYENNE – Patti Gardner, MSN, CNM, IBCLC, CNE, a clinical nurse specialist at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC), has been selected from among hundreds of international applicants to participate in the 2006 Maternal-Child Leadership Academy. Twenty-one pairs of mentors and mentees were chosen for the academy, an 18-month program that focuses on improving the lives of women and their families.
Academy participants were chosen on the basis of projects they submitted and the need for them in their communities.
Developed with the help of a mentor from the University of Wyoming, Gardner’s project seeks to create and implement a new maternal and fetal assessment program at CRMC—focusing on a fetal monitoring technique. Gardner specializes in women’s health and lactation.
Gardner and her mentor, Mary Beth Stepans, RN, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming’s Fay Whitney School of Nursing, are the only maternal-child health nurses from the Rocky Mountain region selected to participate in the academy, which is co-sponsored by Sigma Theta Tau, the international honor society of nursing, and Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute, LLC.
The academy’s 42 participants are from nine states, the District of Columbia and Canada. They range in position from staff nurse to hospital vice president.
Gardner and Stepans attended the opening session of the leadership academy in Minneapolis, Minn., in June. At the session they heard from nationally known experts in maternal-child health and organizational leadership.
To assist with their project, Gardner and Stepans have also been assigned an academy faculty advisor, Melanie Basso, RN, MSN, PNC(C), perinatal senior practice leader from British Columbia’s Women’s Hospital in Vancouver.
The project goal, said Gardner, is to develop a policy at CRMC for when and how to use a fetal monitoring procedure known as intermittent auscultation (IA).
Currently CRMC uses continuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM). EFM works through the use of electronic monitors attached by a belt to a pregnant women’s abdomen during labor and delivery. An EFM prints out a record of the fetal heartbeat and the duration and frequency of uterine contractions.
IA is a means of listening to fetal heart tones with an acoustical device (fetascope) or a handheld ultrasound (doptone), with a physician, Certified Nurse Midwife or registered nurse noting the heart’s rate, rhythm and variability—usually following a uterine contraction. IA gives a woman more freedom to move about in labor.
Gardner’s project has enlisted two interdisciplinary teams of 18 CRMC medical, nursing and administrative professionals to develop, promote and implement the new policy, “prescribing when and how to administer IA versus EFM,” Gardner said.
“The purpose is to have both forms of fetal monitoring available for patients, but to also have a detailed policy in place and to offer all labor and delivery nurses in-depth, hands-on training in administering IA,” said Gardner.
“When a patient is admitted to CRMC’s labor and delivery unit, that patient, the patient’s family and nurse establish a relationship. The patient’s expectations for her labor and delivery experience are discussed. Our ability as individual nurses, a department and hospital to provide the highest standard of safe patient care, while maintaining as much patient autonomy and choice as possible, is the priority,” said Gardner.
Establishing IA as a fetal monitoring option at CRMC “will enhance Relationship-Based Care, the model of nursing practice embraced by CRMC,” said Gardner.
While Gardner developed the project description and timeline in collaboration with Stepans, Gardner emphasized that the final outcome will be based on the efforts of the interdisciplinary teams. The groups are made up of registered nurses employed in CRMC’s labor and delivery department, obstetrics and family practice physicians and members of the hospital’s administrative team.
“The nurses on the teams are very vested and energized about this project,” said Gardner. “They have taken ownership because they understand that it is the right thing to do for our patients,” she said.
Gardner said she is hopeful that IA will be ready to offer to patients beginning in February of 2007. Gardner and Stepans plan to present their final report to the International Sigma Theta Tau Conference in Baltimore, MD, in November 2007.
CRMC is a 206-bed premier regional health care system that prides itself on delivering the highest standard of quality care to meet the growing healthcare needs of its patients from Wyoming, Northern Colorado and Western Nebraska. CRMC’s highly trained physicians and employees, state-of-the-art facilities and advanced technologies ensure patients will receive exceptional care close to home.
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