Orthopedics Center for Excellence

Hey Lauren its Mike I am curious to see how Thursday is going to go. I wonder if they will staff us decently or try and get blood from a stone. Maybe I will see you there Thursday see ya.

Sorry I realize this post was a while ago, but our unit is going to something similiar. We are also a 32 bed floor and we are changing to 30 bed and a new approach. To treat our new joints as healthy patients. We are doing away with pain pumps and once a day rehab. Now we are doing scheduled oral pain meds with TID rehab. Everyone is up and dressed for breakfast in a central dining room. We started this with one doc and will be doing this with all total joints in Jan. We are also getting new rooms, etc. So how is this working for you? I am initially very excited about this. I think that it will improve the outcomes for pts. What have you found? Thanks.

The unit I work on is called "joint works" and what you described is pretty much our unit in a nutshell. The PT room/headquarters is in the same hallway as the majority of our patients. The only difference is we do not have "group" sessions. We do utilize coaches (although they are not allowed to spend the night). We do the 6am rise and shine too. We do 90 degrees flexion as a goal before discharge and also "walking the steps" is another. Otherwise the patient goes to inpatient rehab on day 4.

I do not think making it a competitive thing is a very good idea. "if suzie sees rose doing 20 steps she will want to "beat" her and do 25 steps." seems like it may actually make suzie feel like she is doing really bad (some people are pessimistic). I think if someone not doing as well as another may feel like they are doing worse if they see a much younger patient doing more than they are. Does that make sense? I think recovery should be a lot more personalized than they are making it sound.

I do like the idea of 3 PT sessions per day though. I think that's awesome! I also like the idea of the femoral blocks for every patient. A lot of the orthopods where I work are pretty oldschool though so I don't know how well they'd take to change. I expect a post from you in the future letting us know how this works out for your unit.

Check out Plaza Medical Center in Fort Worth TX. We have recently received the JCAHO certification for joint centers!