The best way to learn about someone or something is to go right to the source. Over the past several years I have spent time listening, shadowing and learning about how healthcare IT impacts care teams. While most, if not all healthcare IT vendors claim time savings, improved care and in some cases financial savings – is this what really matters to clinicians? I’m going straight to the source!

I have had the distinct honor of working with and learning from some amazing nurses and I am beyond excited to welcome Peggy Teardo, RN to the Mobile Heartbeat team as the Director of Clinical Implementation and my source to learn how clinical teams are using healthcare communication tools.

Karen Jimenez: Hi Peggy and welcome to Mobile Heartbeat! I am so excited that you have joined the team, I am really looking forward to working with you and learning so much more about patient care.

Peggy Teardo: Thank you Karen, I’m so happy to be a part of the team. Looking forward to chatting with you about nursing and to help celebrate National Nurses Week 2017.

KJ: I’m going to get right to it and ask why you wanted to study nursing?

PT: Nursing was more of a calling for me than a career choice. Even as a young child, I knew I led a very blessed existence and felt an obligation to give back to God and my fellow man.  To add to that, my mother was a great role model. She too is a nurse and perhaps one of the most compassionate nurses I have ever known. It seemed natural to follow in her footsteps.

KJ: How does your clinical experience benefit you in a role in healthcare IT? What advice would you give to someone considering making that move?

PT: As nurses, one of our most important roles is that of patient advocate. I can think of no better way to act as a patient advocate than to assure the administration of safe, efficient and quality care. I believe nurse informaticists do just that through the implementation of closed loop processes that convert error prone processes to air tight workflows. That being said, this specialty is not for the faint of heart. Bring your strength of convictions with you when raising your hand for it.

KJ: What are the top 3 things that nurses like about healthcare technology? …What are the top 3 things they dislike about it?

PT: Likes:

1. Having access to the information they need at the point of care
2. Having the ability to communicate efficiently with other members of the care team
3. Having access to information needed to make clinical decisions at the point of care

Dislikes:

1. Being asked to work with disparate systems that are not interoperable
2. Application response times greater than 1 nano second
3. Too many clicks to accomplish a task

KJ: What are the biggest struggles you hear about regarding clinical communications?

PT:  Clinical communications is the lifeblood of good patient care.  But so often nurses are reliant on land line phone communications or are on a different communication platform from those with whom they need to communicate in the process of coordinating care. The result is inefficient, disjointed or just plain failed communications.  Imagine a scenario where a nurse must contact a provider. There could be several steps including logging into one system to figure out who to contact, another system to track down contact information and yet another to send a secure text message. Once you’ve sent a message to the correct person how do you know they received that message? That is just one example dynamic care teams face when trying to easily and quickly communicate during their shift.

KJ: You’ve spent a lot of time with Mobile Heartbeat customers since you’ve been on board, you’ve been very busy! What are some comments you’ve heard from the users so far?

PT: It is so refreshing to walk on to a unit where MH-CURE is implemented and hear the feedback from the end users. Nurses, providers, unit secretaries, techs, ancillary staff are all excited to have this technology.  They tell me things like “you have changed my life”, “I love being able to know which provider to contact”, “I love that I can get a text from a nurse and be able to reply when I am free to do so”, “I love being able to text the RN to let her know I am coming to get the patient out of bed and to request the patient be medicated beforehand”. It is wonderful to know that we offer workflows that make sense and fit into the workflows of the clinicians like a hand in a glove.

KJ: What are your favorite things to do to balance mind, body and spirit?

PT: No matter the specialty, nursing can be a very stressful career.  We all need to find a way to manage our stress. For me, it’s going to the gym and sweating it out with a gruesome CrossFit workout and leaving it all there.

Thank you again Peggy and happy National Nurses Week to you and to all of the nurses that help us balance our minds, bodies and spirit!

To our readers: tell us about your favorite nurse!