TONL Monthly
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February 2020
TONL News & Updates
 

The Texas Organization for Nursing Leadership (TONL) Board of Directors have approved proposed changes to the TONL Bylaws which were submitted by the TONL Bylaws Committee. The primary purpose of the proposed changes is to maintain alignment of TONL’s name change and update the bylaws with the mission and operations of TONL and AONL.

The name change was presented to the TONL membership in 2019 following the change at the national level, and TONL members overwhelmingly supported changing the name from TONE to TONL. The TONL Board voted to proceed with the name change based on membership support of the proposal and approval of the proposed bylaws is a final step in this process.

TONL Members should have received notification of the proposed bylaws changes via email. The proposed changes will be posted to members for 30 days before the vote is announced. The TONL Board has adopted a new logo that can now be seen on the TONL website at www.texasnurse.org.

Thank you for your continued support of TONL and our community of nursing leaders.

Nurses and midwives play a vital role in providing health services. These are the people who devote their lives to caring for mothers and children; giving lifesaving immunizations and health advice; looking after older people and generally meeting everyday essential health needs. They are often, the first and only point of care in their communities. The world needs 9 million more nurses and midwives if it is to achieve universal health coverage by 2030.
By Dr. Cynthia Plonien, DNP, RN, CENP
TONL Communications Committee Volunteer
 
Nurses rely on scholarly articles for research and evidence-based practice to guide and improve clinical practice. Accessing and utilizing false information, easily published in a predatory journal can result in ethical, moral, and legal consequence to clinicians and harm to patients.
Join us in Dallas on February 20 and 21, 2020, and in Houston on March 6, 2020!
UTHealth
Nursing Leadership
By Nancy Swezey, BSN, RN, CNOR, Minority Nurse
 
Nurses are all too familiar with the instinctive concern for patients, and often equally so for the person sitting at the patient’s side. Many caregivers give up proper sleep, nutrition, recreation, and financial resources to care for a family member with a disease that requires comprehensive, and often constant, care.
By Mandy Roth, HealthLeaders Media
 
How has a health system with a 323-bed hospital and a three-person innovation team built connections with more than 100 startups around the globe and attracted a Johnson & Johnson innovation lab to collocate on its campus? And how does it simultaneously challenge its own academic faculty to tackle the quandary of pediatric device innovation?
By John Palmer, PSQH
 
Realizing the growing impact that stress and burnout takes on the health of nurses and their ability to do their job properly, The Joint Commission has decided to step in to help battle the problem. In July 2019, the accreditation agency released Quick Safety Issue 50: Developing Resilience to Combat Nurse Burnout, published to help healthcare facilities with the process of personal protection from burnout for nurses and other frontline staff.
By Julia Quinn-Szcesuil, Minority Nurse
 
Promotions take a lot of effort—few nurses get promoted just because they come to work every day. How can you bring some attention to your work? Here are five small steps to do this year that may set you on a path to your next promotion.
Nurse executives in a senior management position within an acute care facility including chief nursing officers, nurse directors, nurse managers and executive nursing officers with at least one year of experience in this role are requested to participate in a survey for a research study titled “Qualifications of Executive Nurses for Service on Hospital Boards."
By Brandon "Kit" Bredimus, DNP, MSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, CNML, NE-BC
TONL District 2 Director
 
In 2018, nearly one in five Americans experienced a mental health condition, yet only half of those living with mental illness received treatment. The rate of mental health conditions continues to rise as the funding and resources for treatment continue to decline.
By Anuja Vaidya
 
CMS has assigned star ratings to more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide based on their performance across seven areas of quality. CMS updated its Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings for 2020, giving 407 hospitals, including 37 in Texas, a rating of five stars.
Healthcare Industry
By Alexandra Wilson Pecci, HealthLeaders Media
 
More patients are using their financial experience to make healthcare decisions, making financing programs a requirement of doing business. Adding to the growing chorus of need for flexible patient financing options is a new study showing that 37% of patients would opt to forgo treatment without a patient financing program.
By Morgan Haefner, Becker's Hospital Review
 
PwC's Health Research Institute released its annual report on trends that are most and least likely to affect the healthcare industry in 2020. Through its analysis, HRI verified whether six statements about current healthcare trends are true or false.
Practice and Patient Care
By Christopher Cheney, HealthLeaders Media
 
Although it has limits, open communication can decrease the emotional and behavioral impacts of medical errors. New research published by BMJ Quality and Safety produced several significant findings.
By Heather Stringer, Nurse.com
 
Nurse practitioner Catherine Trossello, DNP, FNP-BC, AAHIVS, and her colleagues at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City were exploring the possibility of starting a nurse practitioner fellowship focused on caring for LGBTQ patients when they discovered a surprising fact. They learned that theirs would be the first fellowship in the country to offer this type of postgraduate specialty training for NPs.
By Jennifer Thew, RN, HealthLeaders Media
 
When nurses reported less frequent use of palliative care for their patients, they tended to experience higher levels of moral distress, a study finds. Interprofessional collaboration is key to providing the appropriate level.
By Anuja Vaidya, Becker's Hospital Review
 
A program to help surgery patients prepare physically and mentally for their procedure can help hospitals reduce their length of stay and lower costs, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The "prehabilitation" program was first tested among patients at Ann Arbor-based Michigan Medicine before being implemented at 21 other hospitals in the state.
Members in the News
On Jan. 23, Christy Escandon, RN, BSN, was selected as the new CNO of UT Health East Texas. The system also appointed a new COO/CFO, CMO and vice president of human resources on that date.