Updated wing enhances stay for Missouri Delta patients

Michelle Felter, Standard Democrat
standard-democrat.com
Sunday, April 18, 2010

SIKESTON – The first telemetry patients will take advantage of the brand-new 3F wing this week at Missouri Delta Medical Center.

“We are expecting to  move patients there on Tuesday or Wednesday,” said Karen Lawless, telemetry manager.  The floor deals with patients who need to be connected to machines to measure heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate, as well as blood-oxygen level and heart-rhythm monitoring information.

The 3F wing includes 18 rooms, all private, handicap-accessible, and with their own bathrooms.

There are several features in the individual rooms and on the floor that help make it a state-of-the-art facility, noted Emily Featherston, vice president of nursing at the hospital.

For instance, some of the rooms have ceiling lifts, enabled with slings.  “They can pick up patients weighing up to 500 pounds and bring them to a chair to sit,” she explained.

The rooms with ceiling lifts also have portable IV’s on them, which travel to all areas of the room, other than the bathroom.

“We’re trying to cut down on the amount of equipment on the floor of the rooms,” she said.

All of the rooms include a “nurse server” – cabinets where nurses stock supplies, such as pillows, which can be opened from inside the room or in the hallway.

“This way, the nurses can stock those cabinets without disrupting the patients,” said Featherston.

Also in the hallways, a locked box is assigned to each room, she pointed out.  Those boxes are used to store charts, as well as medications, for each patient.

Featherston continued that all rooms are equipped with a computer to enable computer charting.  The nurses have adapted very well to the new electronic process, said Featherston.

Outside of the rooms, there is a nurses’ and doctors’ station, along with an isolation room that can provide positive and negative air, said Featherston.

Telemetry patients at the hospital currently use the 2E area of the hospital.  “Once patients are moved, that area will be used as overflow,” said Lawless.

She said this is an “exciting time” for the hospital with all the new additions.

“It will improve the area for telemetry and cardiac monitoring,” she said.  As telemetry patients stay in the hospital an average of five days, the new wing will enhance the patients stay, she said.

Dicky Chance, medical/surgical nursing director added, “We have a tremendous staff and look forward to servicing the surrounding communities with an exceptional high standard of care for the patients and their families.”