Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital Emergency Department

Geneva, Illinois

Northwestern Medicine Delnor Emergency Department created a standardized charge nurse leadership development program that addresses operational skills including staff scheduling, payroll, productivity, orientation and onboarding. The program also addresses relational skills development including emotional intelligence, communication styles, and hosting difficult conversations through simulation utilizing standardized actors. The implementation of the standardized charge nurse leadership development program resulted in improved leader confidence and streamlined operations, as well as an 83 percent reduction in voluntary resignations.

The ED also led the creation and implementation of a standardized process for proactively identifying hospital resources by an interprofessional team with a focus on capacity, coordination and communication. The process improved hospital throughput efficiency between the ED and inpatient units and illustrates a commitment to prioritizing ED daily volume activity and decreasing patient length of stay. An electronic tool was created to review current and projected hospital capacity, surgical admissions, ED volume activity and projected daily volume, EMS arrivals, and inpatients boarding in the ED. This process allows the hospital to project the need for and acquire resources by decompressing the ED, identifying appropriate bed placement, and addressing staffing needs across all nursing departments. Since the initiative began, inpatient boarding hours decreased by 8 percent.