Marietta Memorial Hospital’s Nurse Residency Program graduated 19 nurse residents on April 2, 2024. The nurse residents celebrated the completion of the year-long program and presented their professional experiences to nursing leadership and administration.

Professional experiences from the April 2023 cohort include:

Blood Bank Bracelets - Taylor Doughty, BSN, RN & Eric Stevens, RN. The purpose is to simplify blood bank bracelets and save valuable time during pre-transfusion. This project also streamlined the transfusion process to improve patient safety by reducing human errors related to patient identification.

Implementation of Handover Report Sheet—Reni Siray, BSN, RN, Jay Alba, BSN, RN, & Kharla Yee, BSN, RN. The objective is to implement a standardized and evidence-based handover report sheet that provides a clear and concise overview of the patient’s status.

Accurate Lab Draw of Anticoagulation Levels—Pam Morehead, RN, and Jean Varghese, BSN, RN. The purpose of this project is to decrease lab inaccuracies due to poor technique by implementing evidence-based practices to ensure anticoagulation levels are drawn at appropriate times, and steps are taken to ensure results are accurate.

Implementation of Color-Coded Departmental Wristbands—Maria Reniva, BSN, RN, and Donna Reniva, BSN, RN. The purpose and goal are to accurately identify patients, improve care coordination, standardize practice, and empower patients.

Decreasing Infection Rate in Central/Midline and Peripheral Lines—Leslie Rankin, RN, Jessica Schofield, RN, and Caitlyn Wyant, RN. This project is designed to improve patient outcomes, decrease length of stay and hospital costs, and increase patient satisfaction by utilizing a combination of approaches.

 Simplified Surgery Discharge Instructions—Tara Joseph, RN. A review of patient satisfaction surveys indicated that patients needed to better understand their discharge/post-operative instructions. This project implemented easy-to-read and understand discharge instructions utilizing a stoplight format that directed patients to which actions they needed to take based on symptoms.

Critical Alert Value—Aries Bon Golez, BSN, RN, Jobel Laguador, BSN, RN, & Thomas Zuñega, BSN, RN. The goal was to resolve factors that impacted the timeliness of alert value notification by the critical alert appearing in the sepsis alert monitor or Meditech worklist that notifies the RN. This notification will also appear in the physician’s work queue, where the alert can be acknowledged, and the physician can send orders as necessary.

Implementation of a Hospital Nursing Float Pool—Haylee Parks RN, Claire Buckey RN, and Logan Welch RN. They performed research and collected evidence on the successful implementation of a hospital nursing float pool and the positive long-term benefits for staff. Implementing a float pool aims to increase staff satisfaction and retention rates by 50% over the next year.

“This cohort of nurse residents has been a wonderful bunch of nurses to work with. I love their dedication to improving patient safety and nursing processes by making meaningful contributions to the organization,” said Site-Coordinator Denitra Hendershot, MSN, RN, Educational Services Specialist, Marietta Memorial Hospital.

Congratulations to Marietta Memorial Hospital on completing its fourth cohort of residents. We look forward to your continued partnership and support of future new graduate nurse hires.

Interested employers should contact nicole-weathers@uiowa.edu for more information or schedule a time to visit 1:1, to learn more.

IONRP Manager Nicole Weathers, MSN, RN, NPD-BC