“It’s my life’s dream to be a nurse,” says Lou Anne Griffi n, R.N., “to take care of people.”

A FirstHealth Critical Care Transport nurse for the past 11 years, Griffin serves on a committee of nurses pursuing “Magnet” designation—the nation’s highest recognition for nursing—at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. In June, she spoke before the Moore Regional Hospital Foundation Grant Committee, seeking funding to cover the Magnet credentialing process.

“Our physicians give excellent care,” Griffin told the committee, “and it is the nurses who support them. That’s why we have these great outcomes at Moore Regional Hospital. The nurse makes a big difference.”

Moore Regional Hospital Foundation agrees with Griffin about the vital role that nurses play in patient care. The Magnet grant was unanimously endorsed by the review committee.

It is with such philanthropic funding that the Foundation provides special support for FirstHealth nurses. Every year, scholarship funding for nursing excellence is extended to various FirstHealth departments, enabling nurses to attend seminars and conferences designed to increase their knowledge and clinical skills.

This leads to a top-notch nursing staff—and to more satisfied nurses.

Charged and renewed
“You come back from a conference feeling so charged, so renewed,” says Medina James, R.N., an open-heart nurse who, along with six other nurses from her unit, attended the National Teaching Institute Critical Care Exposition in New Orleans. James, who has worked at Moore Regional for 13 years, took classes at NTI on new guidelines in open-heart surgery, ventilator-acquired pneumonia and a number of other clinical areas.

“Moore Regional has the feel of a teaching hospital,” James says. “There is so much collaboration and education.”

With cutting-edge treatment in cardiovascular care changing at a rapid pace, James sees an enormous advantage in being able to attend the critical care conference.

“We have to be at the top of our game all the time,” she says.

“This conference was attended by 8,000 nurses from all over the country,” says Sandy Jones, R.N., a critical care nurse who is in her 15th year at Moore Regional.

“In addition to the networking that occurs with nurses from all over the country at these conferences, our nurses are able to benchmark on challenges we have and develop resources to call upon when faced with something new,” says Linda DeYoung, administrative director of FirstHealth Rehabilitative Services.

Jones, a veteran of four NTI conferences, describes what it’s like when you arrive at the Critical Care Exposition. “They give you a proceedings book—954 pages this last trip—that outlines the body of information about each class,” she says, “so that the night before classes begin you can look it over to choose those classes with the objectives you want to meet.”

There are classes tailored for beginners all the way up to advanced practice, in areas such as emergency department, pediatrics/neonatal, pharmacology, leadership development, technology and legal issues. There are also lots of equipment demonstrations by vendors—LOTS of vendors, Jones says.

“You can see anything from demonstrations of new beds to sequential compression devices for preventing leg blood clots,” she says. “For me, personally, going to these classes and seeing nurses who do the same thing that I do but have the nerve to get up and share what they do has made me feel better about presenting to others and sharing knowledge.”

Sharing the knowledge
Sharing what they learn at these conferences is a big part of the scholarship program. After nurses return from training, they share information in several ways: at department staff meetings, at clinical effectiveness meetings and through poster sessions. Both James and Jones have prepared posters displaying the highlights of the classes they took at NTI.

“As the education liaison for CVT, I am always putting up articles on hot topics,” says James. “Of the six of us from my area who went, we are each preparing a poster on a different topic.”

Andrea Marks, an R.N. from the cardiac care unit, says that her favorite NTI classes taught her more about cardiac ICU care, particularly the use of intra aortic balloon pumping.

“NTI is just amazing,” she says. “There was so much to see and so much to learn. Our patients benefit from updated, current treatment plans.”

Of course, NTI isn’t the only educational opportunity that the Foundation funds. According to Kathy Westover, interim executive director of the Foundation of FirstHealth, the Foundation funds about 20 scholarships per year.

Joy Martin, R.N., an assistant director in Moore Regional’s Neurosciences Department, notes that nurses have been able to attend the Annual Association of Neuro Nurses in Washington, D.C., a conference on traumatic brain injury in San Francisco, and a seminar on movement disorders in Aspen, Colo.

Closer to home, nurses have attended a leadership certification program in Chapel Hill and an NC/Care of the Neurosurgical Patient meeting in Myrtle Beach. Topics covered during local in-service training have included a falls program in Fayetteville, a class on the titration of hemodynamic drugs in Raleigh and a meeting on trauma cases at Duke University Medical Center.

“As you can see, these funds are used to cover many topics that are all pertinent to patient care and the advancement of the staff nurses’ skills and knowledge,” Martin says. “Each has used this knowledge in their day-to-day patient care and in the precepting of other staff—including a Neuro Blitz poster session for all of Moore Regional Hospital, Montgomery Memorial Hospital and Richmond Memorial Hospital nurses.”

Marjorie Rivers, an R.N. from the Robins Neuro ICU at Moore Regional, has used Foundation funding on two occasions. “It helped me, being new to the ICU setting, to learn about drugs and emergency situations,” she says.

“The class that I attended was about diversity in the workplace,” says Richard Barnes, an LPN from the Neuroscience Department. “I have become more aware of diversity and have been able to apply it to patient care and communication.”

The ability to provide these training opportunities is a great recruitment and retention tool, according to both DeYoung and Martin. “It is a wonderful morale booster to the nurses, as well as the areas in which they work,” Martin says.

“Other than the classes themselves, the NTI conference serves as a good ‘rah rah’ session on why you are a nurse,” says Jones. “It’s all about how to be a better nurse, and then you go home and be a better nurse.”