Southwest General Health Center Blog 1

     My name is Brandon and I am a senior BSN student at Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. For my capstone site, I am at Southwest General Health Center (SWGHC), which is located in Middleburg Heights, Ohio. SWGHC is a 300 bed community hospital. I am enjoying my time hear and find it very interesting because it is such a different experience than being at the Cleveland Clinic, UH, or Metro, which are larger hospitals in comparison. The other thing that is interesting about SWGHC is the diverse programs they have under the community nursing section, which Melissa and I are in for the semester. In the community nurse section, they do a lot of various screenings, which include cholesterol, glucose, BMI, osteoporosis, blood pressure, and several others. They also participate in working with patients recently discharged with congestive heart failure, and also with the elderly population in the hospitals' taxing district.

     My favorite thing about the first half of capstone was actually during our first week, when one of the community nurses took us along with her to the General Motors Factory to participate in a GM health fair. It was very hands on for us, as we got to screen employees and retired GM employees for blood glucose levels and measure their body mass index. It was also a great experience because we were able to go around at the health fair and see what other community hospitals and caregivers were offering at the event. It was enjoyable being out in the community and participating in a different community based experience than we have been exposed to.

     Melissa and I have also figured the direction in which we are going for out Capstone project. We are going to be working with the Transition Nursing Program (TNP) that SWGHC already has established with adding our own spin on it. The TNP was established to decrease readmissions within 30 days of discharge for congestive heart failure (CHF). This is because starting this past October, Medicare began penalizing hospitals who had readmission rates of CHF higher than the national average, by refusing reimbursements throughout the whole hospital by 1%, which is a lot of money. The TNP program piloted through its first year and was deemed successful, so they continued again for a second year. What Melissa and I were curious about however, was is this a short term plan to make sure the hospital does not get penalized, or is this something that can work for a long term intervention. In order to do this, we decided to look at readmissions with CHF within a 30-60 day period, along with a 60-90 day period. We also decided that we were going to conduct a patient satisfaction survey in order to see how the patients who are enrolled within this program feel about it, and if they feel it was helpful or not. We are hoping to get good information back to report to the community nurses to see if there are any weakness in their program that could be improved.

     I feel very lucky to be at this site because it has been a very beneficial experience thus far. Look forward to the update on our results of our capstone!