Frankfort Regional Medical Center nurses make patient and staff safety a priority. We want our patients to recognize their well-being is protected. Our staff is able to provide excellent care because they are able to place all their focus upon doing their best.
Safety is a part of the FRMC culture.
Nurses support a safety culture through:
Fall prevention
FRMC nurses assess patients at risk for falls on admission and every shift. Patients are educated to prevent falling while in the hospital. Nursing staff performs rounds every hour to ask patients if they need assistance in going to the bathroom or getting out of or back to bed.
Patients are provided a pair of non-skid socks. To remind patients to ask for assistance when needed, signs created by the Nursing Practice Council are posted in every room reminding them help is available as needed.
Scanning
Nurses use wireless scanners to prevent mistakes when providing care. Each patient is provided a unique barcode on his/her identification bracelet and that barcode is scanned to ensure it matches the bar code for ordered treatments such as medication administration, blood administration, or breast milk delivery.
As a result, newborn infants have always received their own mother’s milk, all patients have been administered the right type of blood, and medication errors related to administering the wrong medication dose of medication to the wrong patient are avoided.
Code BERT (Behavioral Emergency Response Team)
Admission to the hospital can be frightening and stressful for patients and families. At times, individuals are unable to exhibit healthy coping behaviors and require assistance from a trained interdisciplinary team to assist them in regaining the ability to appropriately respond to their environment.
Behavioral health nurses partnered with nurses in the other acute care settings, engineering staff, and ancillary staff to form a trained, empathetic, team expert in de-escalating unhealthy behaviors.
The BERT Team responds to calls from caregivers who recognize a patient or family member requires assistance in regaining self-control and establishes a safe environment. The team treats all patients like family recognizing anyone can be in that patient’s situation at some point in life.
Infant security
FRMC nurses in the Center for Women’s Health keep mothers and newborns safe. To ensure newborns are secure, all babies receive a bracelet with a chip designed to track the location of the baby at all times. If the infant would leave the care area, an alarm would be activated and elevators would be locked.