Nurses in two of North Shore University Hospital’s intensive care units were honored recently by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.
The Manhasset hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit received a gold-level Beacon Award of Excellence from the association and the medical intensive care unit received a silver-level award.
“The critical care teams embody the highest level of professionalism, skill and compassion for highly acute and complex patients, from newborns to adults,” Kerri Ann Scanlon, North Shore’s chief nursing officer and deputy chief nurse executive at Northwell Health, which operates the hospital, said.
Critical care units that receive the Beacon Award are measured against national criteria in leadership structures and systems; appropriate staffing and staff engagement; effective communication, knowledge management, learning and development and best practices; evidence-based practice and processes; and outcome measurement.
Scanlon said it is not common that a unit is awarded a gold-level honor on its first designation but credits the nurses’ dedication and passion for their patients.
“The thing that’s never lost is the compassion and the care that’s provided,” Scanlon said. “You’re getting state-of-the art care but with the greatest compassion for the parents and loved ones that these babies belong to.”
The neonatal intensive care unit is a 51-bed facility providing care to extremely premature infants as well as full-term infants born with illnesses that prohibit them from staying with their mothers.
The medical intensive care unit is a 17-bed facility designed to care for critically ill patients with pulmonary, renal, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, metabolic and infection disorders.
“The nurses within that unit truly see a very large diversity of clinical diagnoses, and the care they provide is absolutely stellar,” Scanlon said. “Our medical intensive care unit has always been superb, but I have seen it grow over the last three or four years to one of the nationally recognized medical intensive care units.”
Two other North Shore University Hospital units — the cardiothoracic unit and the neurosurgical intensive care unit — received the silver Beacon Award in 2016.
Scanlon said the nurses in both units work in a calm yet confident manner, which Scanlon said is not always the case in intensive care.
“They approach it always with empathy and compassion for the patients they’re caring for and their loved ones, which you don’t always see in ICUs,” Scanlon said. “Sometimes you see more of a cold approach, and that’s never the approach in these two units.”
