Talk

Empowering healthcare providers and enhancing quality of care

Thursday June 23, 11:30, Lobby NLG

Andreas Dracopoulos, SNF Co-President
Anna Mariola, Anesthesiologist; Director, EKAV Air Ambulance Services Coordination Center
Sofia Koukouraki, Professor of Nuclear Medicine, University of Crete Medical School; Director of the Nuclear Medicine Department, PAGNI Hospital
Panagiotis Koulouvaris, Associate Professor of the First Orthopaedic Clinic, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens; President of Regeneration & Progress; SNF Health Consultant
Pavlos Myriantheus, Professor of Critical Care & Pulmonary Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Ioannis Faropoulos, Project Manager, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Outcomes Research
Sarah Szanton, Dean, Patricia M. Davidson Health Equity and Social Justice Endowed Professor, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
Betsy McCaughey, Chairman, Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths

Key strategic areas of health care that empower providers were identified: having enough personnel who are appropriately trained, training on management of multiple-trauma patients, prevention and treatment of hospital-acquired infections, and infrastructure well staffed with health care workers.

“Better trained and more empowered staff.” This was the message that ran through all the talks from speakers on health care provider empowerment.

Sharing their own experiences, Dimitris Pyrros and Anna Mariola recounted how an 11-year-old boy was airlifted from Zakynthos Hospital to Agia Sophia Children's Hospital in order for his arm to be reattached, and how a Greek woman was airlifted from Hannover, Germany, to Elefsina within three hours. "Air ambulances do not work miracles—they are useless if there’s no one on the ground for pre-hospital care. The doctors we are training thanks to the donation [part of the SNF Health Initiative] were able to perform rescue actions they had learned in SNF training programs just a week before.”

Next, Panagiotis Koulouvaris and Pavlos Myrianthefs took the floor to discuss “Education in Trauma” and “Advanced Trauma Care for Nurses,” an educational program for medical students and an innovative educational course for health care providers respectively, pointing to the value of training staff on managing multiple-trauma patients.

In a similar vein, Ioannis Faropoulos discussed the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Outcomes Research’s training program for health care workers, before moving on to the other key pillars underpinning the Center's actions: the development of a monitoring database for infections, the subsequent interventions that will follow as a result of the monitoring process, and the recruitment of specialized nursing staff. "For the first time, those involved in infection prevention in this country have joined forces to tackle this silent pandemic," he stressed.

Turning to the issue of preventing and treating hospital-acquired infections, Betsy McCaughey underlined, "The number one predictor of mortality from hospital-acquired infections is the patient’s bed and room," with the risk increasing dramatically if they are placed in a bed previously occupied by an infected patient. She explained that this is due to poor cleaning, which in turn is largely attributed to staff shortages.

Sarah Szanton concluded the talks by praising the role of nursing in health care and underlining how it is not only practiced in hospitals but also prisons, schools, the community, or under bridges to provide care for the homeless. "At Johns Hopkins we have professionals from other fields of expertise who have become nurses. We have lawyers-turned-nurses," she said, highlighting the importance of getting more people involved in order to fill the health care gap. She then addressed the audience: "I wish I could convince everyone here to become nurses."