A neonatal nurse practitioner at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, part of Alexian Brothers Health System, has co-authored a book to help physicians, staff and family advisers at hospitals create and sustain meaningful partnerships with families of newborns to improve safety, quality and the experience of hospital care. Alexian Brothers is a member of Ascension.
Terry Griffin, M.S., A.P.N., N.N.P.-B.C., who works in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at St. Alexius, co-authored “Family-Centered Care for the Newborn: The Delivery Room and Beyond” with Joanna Celenza, a March of Dimes family support specialist who advises families with newborns in the intensive care nursery of the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
Griffin said she decided to write the book “because staff and doctors are not educated in and have not practiced in cultures where partnerships with families are valued or important.” This issue exists not only in the United States, but also around the world, said Griffin, who has traveled internationally as a teacher for the not-for-profit Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care.
“When I went to Saudi Arabia and Japan, it’s the same thing,” she said. “Basically, we have been educated and have practiced in healthcare cultures that are more paternalistic and where doctors and staff have all the answers. … We need to change our cultures to embrace families as partners because they are valuable members of our team.”
This need exists across healthcare, and not just in the care of newborns, she said. “There is a nationwide initiative to improve quality and safety by partnering with both patients and their families across the life span,” she said. “This book is dedicated to just one microcosm of that – the newborn.”
Griffin, who began her nursing career in 1973 and also has worked as a staff nurse and clinical nurse specialist, has witnessed firsthand the benefits of building partnerships with families of newborns. “It absolutely does make care safer,” she said. A big reason, she added, is that partnership requires physicians and staff to listen to families, and listening often results in obtaining valuable information that helps medical teams enhance the quality of care.
After joining St. Alexius in 2006 as a clinical nurse specialist, Griffin worked closely with Korina Sanchez, R.N., physicians and other staff members to implement a variety of practices aimed at building partnerships with families of newborns.
“We have developed a really great culture here for welcoming parents as partners,” Griffin said. “Parents here are part of the team. When I admit a baby here, I tell the parents that there are things that only the hospital staff can do and things that only they can do, and we’re going to work together to help the baby get bigger, better and stronger and be able to go home.”
While encouraging healthcare providers to build partnerships with the families of newborns, “Family-centered Care for the Newborn: The Delivery Room and Beyond” recommends many of the practices implemented at St. Alexius, such as:
- Replacing “the language of power” with the “language of partnership.” The book calls for replacing written and spoken words such as “allow,” “permit,” “require” and “expect” with words such as “welcome,” “encourage” and “support” when communicating with parents.
- Ceasing referring to parents as visitors and to their time with their newborns as “visitation.” “Parents are never visitors in a baby’s life,” said Griffin, who advocates abandoning traditional visitation hours and instead welcoming parents as partners. At St. Alexius “we have a `Partnership with Parents’ policy,” she said. “We never ask them to leave. Because they are partners in decision-making and caregiving, they are welcome to be with their baby 24 hours a day.”
- Welcoming parents to stay in the room when their baby needs to be resuscitated. Traditionally, parents have been asked to leave the room in these situations, but research shows that staying in the room often is beneficial, even though the experience can be upsetting and frightening, Griffin said. In cases in which resuscitation attempts fail, “There is an improved grieving process because the parents saw the heroic efforts to try and save the patient,” she said. At St. Alexius, “we don’t ask parents to leave the room,” Griffin said. Instead, a staff member is assigned to the parents to provide information and emotional support while a medical team tries to resuscitate their baby. Parents often help in deciding how long resuscitation attempts should continue, and in cases in which babies do not survive, parents “always come up and say `Thank you for doing everything you could do,’” Griffin said.
Partnering with families, she said, renews and sustains her passion for her work. Although she doesn’t expect “Family-centered Care for the Newborn: The Delivery Room and Beyond” to become a best-seller, she hopes the book can lead more healthcare providers to embrace the changes that have worked so well at St. Alexius.
“I just hope that partnering with families can happen anyplace, anytime, in every interaction,” Griffin said. “If anyone does change the way that they practice so they do partner with families, that’s what’s important. I really am just trying to change the world of healthcare.”
