Emerging Frontline Leaders' Voices in Response to COVID-19 Crisis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected healthcare institutions, introducing new challenges for nurse leaders and their colleagues. However, little is known about how the pandemic has specifically affected the lives of these leaders and what methods and strategies they are using to overcome pandemic-related challenges. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to examine the effect of the 2019 pandemic on emerging healthcare leaders and highlight methods and strategies they used to overcome pandemic-related challenges. METHODS: The participants in this study represent a diverse group of interprofessional healthcare faculty enrolled in a transformational leadership course (Paths to Leadership) when the pandemic first appeared. Three months into the pandemic, the leadership cohort was invited to participate in this qualitative study, exploring four questions: Q1: How have you transformed your working styles in response to the pandemic? Q2: How have you adjusted your personal life in response to the pandemic? Q3: How have you used leadership skills learned from Paths to Leadership during the pandemic? Q4: What lessons have you learned from the pandemic? Participant narratives were analyzed by a team of nurse researchers using conventional qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Themes for Q1 (working styles) included shifted from face-to-face to telework, faced novel disease and decisions, worked more from home, and challenged to maintain contact with professional peers and team. Themes for Q2 (personal life) included accommodate adults working and children learning from home, looked for and found the positive, and continue to struggle. Themes for Q3 (leadership skills) included reflective practice, listening, holding, and reframing. Finally, themes for Q4 (pandemic lessons) included leadership, human connection, be prepared, taking care of ourselves, and connecting with nature. DISCUSSION: The 2019 pandemic brought hardships and opportunities to faculty members enrolled in an interprofessional transformational leadership course. In conjunction with this course, the pandemic provided a unique opportunity for participants to apply newly acquired relationship building, positive organizational psychology, and reframing skills during a time of crisis. Nursing leaders, whose educational offerings may be immediately "put to the test," may find our lessons learned helpful as they develop strategies to cope with unanticipated future challenges.

Higher Quality, Lower Cost with an Innovative Geriatrics Consultation Service.

OBJECTIVES: To design a value-driven, interprofessional inpatient geriatric consultation program coordinated with systems-level changes and studied outcomes and costs. DESIGN: Propensity-matched case-control study of older adults hospitalized at an academic medical center (AMC) who did or did not receive geriatric consultation. SETTING: Single tertiary-care AMC in Portland, Oregon. PARTICIPANTS: Adults aged 70 and older who received an inpatient geriatric consultation (n=464) and propensity-matched controls admitted before development of the consultation program (n=2,381). Pre- and postintervention controls were also incorporated into cost difference-in-difference analyses. MEASUREMENTS: Daily charges, total charges, length of stay (LOS), 30-day readmission, intensive care unit (ICU) days, Foley catheter days, total medication doses per day, high-risk medication doses per day, advance directive and Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) documentation, restraint orders, discharge to home, and mortality. RESULTS: On average, individuals who received a geriatric consultation had $611 lower charges per day than those without a consultation (p=.02). They spent on average 0.36 fewer days in the ICU (p<.001). They were less likely to have restraint orders (20.0% vs 27.9%, p<0.001), more likely to have a POLST (58.2% vs 44.6%, p<.001), and more likely to be discharged to home (33.4% vs 28.2%, p=.03). They received fewer doses of antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, and antiemetics (10, 5, and 7 fewer doses per 100 patient-days, respectively) and had lower in-hospital mortality (2.4% vs 4%, p=.01). There was no difference in hospital LOS or 30-day readmission. CONCLUSION: Our consultation program resulted in significant reductions in daily charges, ICU days, potentially inappropriate medication use, and use of physical restraints and increased end-of-life planning. This model has potential for dissemination to other institutions operating in resource-scarce, value-driven settings.