RealNews Ohio Valley General Hospital Fills Perioperative Nurse Vacancies with PeriOptimum’s Nurse Education Program The PeriOptimum Education Services program enables hospitals to create preceptors and train nursing students to work in perioperative environments PITTSBURGH, PA. — May 22, 2007 — PeriOptimum, a leader in workflow management solutions and consulting services for healthcare, today announced that three nurses at Ohio Valley General Hospital (OVGH) have completed its PeriOp Education Services program, enabling the organization to fill vacancies on its perioperative staff. “Surgery has become so technical that most hospitals only want to hire experienced nurses, but they are difficult to find, yet at the same time hospitals don’t always have the time to train students,” said Sandy Mamula, director of Surgical Services at OVGH. “PeriOptimum provided us with a solution to this problem.” PeriOptimum’s PeriOp Education Services is a program that enables hospitals without a full-time educator to quickly train their new recruits on critical topics and orient them on the hospital’s perioperative department. PeriOptimum’s Educators are experienced operating room (OR) nurses who are licensed users of the AORN’s PeriOp 101: A Core Curriculum program, which provides the 26 critical topics needed for new recruits to work as a circulator in the OR. “Optimizing the workflow in our ORs, which includes filling perioperative nurse vacancies, is an important part of our strategic mission, especially since we expanded our hospital last year and added an additional OR,” said William Provenzano, President and CEO. “We’ve been working successfully with PeriOptimum for more than two years to optimize our ORs, so we naturally turned to them for help with designing a program to train our perioperative nurses.” “Within only five months, students in our PeriOp Education Services program are able to circulate independently in the OR on basic cases, which enables hospitals to fill nurse vacancies rapidly or expand their staff during growth phases,” said Donna Gallagher, RN, BSN, CNOR, CST, who is PeriOptimum’s nurse consultant education specialist. “In many cases, training nurses to fill these vacancies is the only option, considering the industry’s severe shortage of experienced perioperative nurses.” PeriOptimum began its PeriOp Education Services program at OVGH in September 2006, and completed the training in February 2007. The PeriOptimum educator conducted a review and administered the final exam which resulted in a 100% pass rate. The program consisted of four weeks of classroom-based training in perioperative theory. Upon completion of the four-week class work period, the nurses are assigned a PeriOptimum-trained preceptor that is on the hospital staff. The preceptors coach the students for an additional four months of on-the-job training. PeriOptimum then meets every other week with students, preceptors and OR management to evaluate progress. OVGH would consider using the program again in the future, according to Ms. Mamula, and the students also feel that the program was of value to them. "As a new graduate without any experience in the OR, I found this course very helpful. It taught me all the basics that I can now build upon,” said Ivonne Markish, RN, PeriOp Education Services graduate. About PeriOptimum PeriOptimum is dedicated to improving healthcare throughput. Our real-time location system based PathFinder™ tracking and communication solutions; data analytics and workflow reengineering services enable hospitals to increase clinical productivity and quality, increase patient satisfaction, and dramatically improve the hospital’s bottom line. PeriOptimum is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For more information, you can reach PeriOptimum at |
