2022 Hospital Awards

Kelsey Trujillo, BSN, RN

The LLU Children’s Hospital fellow is Kelsey Trujillo, BSN, RN, a clinical nurse from LLU Children’s Hospital Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Kelsey’s project is entitled, “Improved Night Shift Staff Retention Through Pet Therapy Debriefing.” Kelsey is a night shift nurse who has practiced in the PICU for the last five years. During that time, she noticed a decrease in staff morale and retention. Her project is to make therapy dog time available to the night shift staff in the PICU in order to decrease stress and improve retention. Pet therapy has been successfully utilized to help hospital staff deal with stressful events leading to improved job satisfaction and emotional health. Having seen the positive effects pet therapy has on the day shift team when the therapy dogs visit the patients, the focus of this project will be on the night shift team.

Ridhima Savdharia, BSN, RN

The LLU Medical Center fellow is Ridhima Savdharia, BSN, RN, a clinical nurse from the Troesch Medical Campus Unit 14 East. Ridhi’s project is entitled, “Diabetes Education and Discharge”. During her work on Unit 14 East, Ridhi noted that many patients have new onset diabetes or uncontrolled diabetes for a prolonged period. Management of diabetes and blood sugar control early on is crucial for patients. Often, control of blood sugar looks quite different in the hospital in comparison to how it is managed at home. Hence, discharge education is crucial to ensure the patient understands the treatment plan. On the weekends, it was noted that the diabetic educators were not available. This resulted in variations in the quality and thoroughness of diabetes education given to the patient based on the bedside nurse’s time constraints, familiarity with content, and language barriers, etc. Through her project, Ridhi believes that preparing a structured toolkit to assist with this education can reduce language barriers, provide additional auditory resources, increase accessibility, and improve uniformity of care delivery. Video based instruction can improve patient retention of information while also alleviating RN workflow on the unit.