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Nursing Service
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Introduction/Overview
Nurses at the Miami VA Medical Center provide professional, competent and compassionate nursing care to veterans. Using current health care standards and practices derived from education and research, veterans are ensured competency-based nursing care delivery in collaboration with the multidisciplinary team.
Associate Chief Nurses guide the nursing care provided. Nurse Managers on each unit are directly responsible for care by assigned nursing personnel. Nurse Practitioners provide health care to groups of patients primarily in the ambulatory care and extended care areas, in conjunction with the interdisciplinary team.
Veteran clients and active duty military personnel are provided care throughout the Miami area and the Keys. Registered Nurses are responsible and accountable for the nursing care of all patients. The nursing process is utilized to provide and evaluate comprehensive nursing care, and planned to meet identified biophysical, psychosocial, educational and spiritual needs.
Care is provided in outpatient, inpatient, and home health care settings. Intensive nursing care is provided in three critical care units; four acute medical-surgical units; one rehabilitative and restorative unit, one intermediate medicine unit, one Spinal Cord Injury Unit, and four nursing home care units. Acute psychiatric care is provided on two inpatient units and in the Psychiatric Emergency Service (PES)/Crisis outpatient clinic. Outpatient care is provided in the A&D area using a primary care delivery system. An active Ambulatory Surgery program provides timely care along with a dialysis unit; two Adult Day Care Clinics and three outpatient clinics located in Oakland Park, Key West and mid-town Miami. Home health care is also provided.
Patient care is provided in seven operating rooms, two cystoscopic rooms, the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, and in the gastrointestinal (GI) suite. To support acute patient care services, Nursing Service provides an IV team to initiate and maintain intravenous therapy. An Escort Service is available to transport patients and specimens.
Under the continuing decentralization process that began four years ago, expanded role nurses have been realigned to product lines.
Program Review
Nursing Service has a comprehensive Quality Management Program that approaches data, tracking and reporting from three perspectives: unit based, service-wide and interdisciplinary. Areas for review are selected based on JCAHO-recommended high volume, high cost and problematic criteria. Interventions are determined via the administrative body concerned with the problem area shown in the review.
The Miami VA Medical Center is one of six hospital in the entire nation selected to be featured in the JCAHO soon to be released book, Doing Right Things Right; Survey Readiness Strategies for Accredited Hospitals. It was the only VA selected for inclusion in this book.
Education
Nursing Education, an integral part of Nursing Service, is responsible for assisting all levels and categories of nursing staff to maintain their skills and competencies in providing quality, age-specific nursing care. Educational needs are identified by changes in health care practice, Quality Improvement findings, annual staff evaluations, results of the learning needs surveys, and the individual Skills List Inventory of competencies completed annually by each employee. Registered Nurses who perform expanded clinical functions hold specific clinical privileges which are regularly reviewed, amended, continued or suspended.
Nursing Service is an active participant in meeting the needs of nursing students, undergraduate to post-graduate, in the metro-Miami area. We provide a clinical practice setting for approximately 450 students from five colleges and universities.
Several critical care courses are offered annually to meet the needs of the VA, active duty and reserve military personnel assigned to the Miami area. BCLS instruction is given to several of the other Federal agencies in the Metro-Dade area.
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