Saint Francis Health System

PROJECT PURPOSE

Saint Francis Health System is Oklahoma?s largest health system seeing over 168,183 in the emergency room, admitting 65,837, performing 33,446 surgeries and delivering 5,892 babies. Saint Francis contains eastern Oklahoma?s highest designated trauma center and only children?s hospital. Saint Francis Health System will offer more school of nursing and ancillary partnership opportunities for select universities to cohort their students at Saint Francis Health System hospitals. Students from the University of Tulsa, Northern Oklahoma College and potentially others such as Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma ? Tulsa Campus will be able to perform their entire clinical rotation at Saint Francis. To accomplish this, Saint Francis is going to enlist currently employed nursing and ancillary staff to be adjunct faculty that will be credentialed alongside these university partners. The adjunct faculty will be in charge of monitoring the clinical objectives of respective clinical rotations. The ultimate goal is to produce a greater number of clinical support staff while providing a robust and comprehensive educational environment that ensures the core competencies get taught to each and every student.

EVIDENCE

University of Oklahoma Health Science Center completed a pilot project to standardize nursing preceptor partnerships in 2020. The Oklahoma nursing association has since taken this opportunity to share the partnership model with nursing and university leaders throughout the state as a means to replicate it elsewhere.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

Saint Francis Health System has facilities scattered throughout many counties of eastern Oklahoma which help facilitate the healthcare needs of those communities. Saint Francis interacts and cares for Oklahomans at all phases of life, from birth to death. Saint Francis Hospital is based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a tertiary care center for all eastern Oklahoma hospitals, but primarily for those residing outside of Tulsa County. Prior to the pandemic, Saint Francis was receiving about 1300 requests per month for patients to be transferred, of which about 80-85 percent were accommodated. During the pandemic, the total number of transfer requests rose to about 1600 monthly, of which Saint Francis was only able to accommodate 50-55 percent. This was due to many factors, such as COVID-patients length of stay and bed need requirements but could have been mitigated if adequate staff were available at either Saint Francis Hospital or at the transferring facility. These patients ultimately received care where they were already or found placement at another hospital either in or out of the state. Regardless, many patients and their families felt the impact of the pandemic and how it strained their local hospital and healthcare facilities.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

Measurement of success will include a review of NCLEX and RRT scores from recently graduated students that were in the program as well as a review of where recently graduated students? find employment post-graduation with the goal of retaining students within the state of Oklahoma.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma