Catholic Health – Mercy Hospital Emergency Department

Rockville Centre, New York

Catholic Health – Mercy Hospital’s emergency department staff embraces shared decision-making and actively involves all members of the interdisciplinary team. Staff members have found that this approach helps them to improve patient care and efficiencies, while also fostering ownership and accountability. Each morning at change of shift, all members of the interdisciplinary team participate in a daily safety huddle. This is an opportunity for anyone to raise concerns, provide positive feedback to a fellow teammate, or use it as an opportunity to learn from one another after a significant event. This has helped incorporate the team in quality improvement initiatives as owners and stakeholders, and they now have ownership of PI initiatives and outcomes.

In October 2022, staff from the 67-bed ED collaborated with their partners in the laboratory and identified that the ED blood culture contamination rate was averaging 5.8 percent. This was the call to action needed to implement a targeted nursing educational program. They reviewed the data with the team, reeducated and implemented peer-to-peer and educator-to-peer observations. Progress was discussed at all departmental forums, and as of December 2023, the ED blood culture contamination rate had dropped to 1.1 percent.