The Memorial Center for Learning and Innovation is one of three sites in the state providing training to help hospitals lower readmission rates as well as hospital-acquired conditions.
The training is part of a three-state initiative led by hospital associations in Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Illinois Health and Hospital Assocation (IHA) received a grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to look at using simulation to reduce hospital-acquired infections.
"The simulation team at the Memorial Center for Learning and Innovation was approached about forming a simulation collaboration with Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center, Rush University Medical Center and Memorial Health System," said Audra Chestnut, RN, CHSE, system director for organizaiton learning and simulation at Memorial Health System.
"The curriculum for the first year was already developed by Jump. As part of the collaboration, Rush and Memorial Health System provided insight to make it more applicable to those caring for patients."
The curriculum focuses on areas in which hospitals have the highest risk for readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions. They include urinary tract infections associated with placing catheters, blood clot development and life-threatening infections.
"We want to arm hospitals with another tool in their quality toolbox - the ability to use simulation techniques as a prospective gap analysis in order to identify those conditions which may be leading to patient harm so we can address them before harm occurs," said Adam Kohlrus, CPHQ, CPPS, IHA's assistant vice president of quality, safety and health policy.
Kohlrus leads the development and deployment of the simulation training curriculum across the three participating simulation centers and recruits other Illinois hospitals to attend these training events.
The MCLI has been engaged in the curriculum development since 2017, Kohlrus said, and has implemented three simulation-training sessions focused on catheter-associated urinary tract infections. The MCLI team is slted to deliver three more trainings in 2018.