Redesign gets resource center up and running
A room at the top makes for success
Plans for a patient and family resource center have been drawn up and scrapped several times since the original proposal was made at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1982. Each time a center was proposed, lack of space prevented administrators from endorsing the project.
Then six years ago, when the hospital put together a planning committee for a new hospital entrance, a nursing leader in the group promoted the idea of a learning center. As a result, 1600 square feet were set aside in a prime location. The center is located at the top of the escalator in the main corridor near the admissions center, the gift shop, and the outpatient pharmacy.
Center got 5,000 visitors last year
With its prime location, the resource center has no trouble attracting drop-in visitors. This past year, 5,000 visitors came to the center. "Our primary focus is information geared toward patients and families, and we are pretty much an adult hospital, too. We have a children’s hospital next door, and they also have a big center," says Candace Stiklorius, MSN, RN, C, coordinator of the patient and family education center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
The break-out of visitor categories is fairly even. About one-fourth are patients who have come to the hospital for treatment or preadmission testing. Some have been sent to the center by their physicians following an appointment. (For information on how the center is promoted, see article below.)
Family members also make up about one-fourth of the visitors. They usually have a loved one in intensive care or on another unit, and health care workers have suggested they come to gather more information about the diagnosis.
Another fourth are staff who visit the center in search of information for a particular patient population or a particular patient. The last category is the public, who just stop by to browse with no particular medical need at the moment. The resource center is free and open to the public.
"The majority of our work is helping patients and families with information about illness," Stiklorius points out. "I think it is our setting, because that is what people want to know. They have just gotten their diagnosis, and information is not readily available. Physicians have limited time for explaining and discussing all the ramifications."
Funding for the center coincided nicely with the allocation of space. About the same time the hospital administrators began designing a new entrance, a group of people in the financial department put together a golf tournament for raising funds. They weren’t quite sure what to do with the money, so the nurses on the fundraising committee suggested that they give the proceeds to patient education — an area always short of funds.
The group agreed, and the tournament has raised between $20,000 and $30,000 for patient education over the past five years. Some of those funds were used to purchase the books, computers, software, and supplies for the learning center when it opened two years ago. The coordinator’s salary is paid by the hospital. (To learn how the center meets staffing needs, see article, above.)
Although space is limited, available funds have been used wisely to stock the center. Amid the wooden bookshelves are four chairs and a small couch so people can read materials comfortably. The shelves are stocked with pamphlets, health newsletters from other academic centers, and health resource books written for lay people. There are also a few models, such as a heart and a hip. The center is designed for browsing, and people cannot check out the books or take pamphlets.
To the left of the room are two booth-type spaces used by volunteers. To the right of the center in the corridor are two additional booths equipped with computers that have access to the Internet and CD-ROM capabilities. The booths, which hold two people comfortably, also have television/VCR equipment. The center has about 15 educational CD-ROMs on such topics as breast cancer and childbirth.
There also is a television/VCR in the sitting room area of the center, but it is used primarily to play the hospital’s relaxation channel that broadcasts soft music and pretty pictures. "I can put a particular health-related video into this VCR if I need to," says Stiklorius.
A small conference room down the corridor with a dividing curtain and a soundproof door is usually used for presurgery and smoking cessation classes, but is available for Stiklorius to have a discussion with someone or to have a family view a video in private.
The original 1982 plans for the center called for a patient and staff learning lab, but over the years the plans evolved into a patient education center.
Printer is kept in a storage room
Although there are five computers at the center — two used by volunteers, one in the office, and two in the booths set up for visitors — there is only one printer, located in the storage room. The public computers are not hooked up to the printer.
"I tell people if they come up with something they want, they can write down the Web site address and I will go on the other computers and print it. In that way, we have some sort of screening process," says Stiklorius.
In addition to monitoring printouts, disclaimer signs are posted at the center, and all materials given out are stamped with a disclaimer that tells the visitor to take the material back to his or her physician to discuss it.
Materials handed out to patients usually come from computer printouts from Web sites or software programs that are not copyrighted. Staff are encouraged not to make copies from pages in the books. Similar information often can be obtained on the Web or from a software program, says Stiklorius.
While most patients come to the center for information, they find much more. "We have music and a calm atmosphere that gives visitors the ability to cope with whatever is going on. That is one of the things we offer which is a little bit beyond and above information," says Stiklorius.
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