The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses held its annual National Teaching Institute and Critical Care Exposition this week in Houston, TX. During the four-day event, 25 acute and critical care nurses were presented with the Circle of Excellence Award, recognizing their efforts to achieve optimal patient outcomes.
Jose Sala, night nurse manager, surgical and liver ICU at Houston Methodist Hospital, was among this year’s honorees.
“I feel so honored and privileged to be a recipient of this prestigious award,” says Sala. “I consider it one of my most rewarding accomplishments. I dedicate it to my family, my former professors, and preceptors, and most importantly, the patients whom I’ve cared for at the bedside during the past nine years. They have been my best teachers.”
Sala earned his BSN in 2012 from the University of Texas Health Science Center at the Houston School of Nursing and feel in love with critical care nursing during his capstone preceptorship in a general medical/surgical trauma ICU in South Texas.
“I was awed and impressed by how knowledgeable my preceptor was about pharmacology, pathophysiology, and patient management,” says Sala. “I saw how she was such an integral part of the critical care team, and how she had finesse, confidence, and a strong rapport with the surgeons and intensivists and all the other professionals in the unit. That two-month period played a seminal role in my journey in critical care.”
In his current role as the night nurse manager in the surgical and liver ICU, Sala has had the opportunity to work on initiatives that have improved not only patient care, but the overall work environment for his team. These initiatives led to his Circle of Excellence award.
He is most proud of his work to develop “flash rounds” in his unit – an initiative that directly impacts patient outcomes.
“Together with Dr. Atiya Dhala, one of our intensivists, and with the support of my director, Michele Ramirez, I implemented what we called “flash rounds” in our unit that focused on the ABCDEF bundle,” explains Sala. “This bundle aims to prevent the unintended consequences of critical illness, including delirium, prolonged ventilation, and excessive muscular deterioration. Every morning, at 8 a.m., each and every bedside staff nurse presented their patient to the team – the intensivists, nurse practitioners, residents, physical therapists, and respiratory therapists – as they rounded on the whole unit. Strictly focusing on these components and separate from teaching rounds, the flash rounds set the tone for the day for the team. This was not only met with much enthusiasm and support by most of our staff, but it also helped increase the mobilization rate, decreased our self-extubations, and reduced our ventilator days.”
Sala has also worked hard to improve his unit’s work environment.
“One of our key challenges in our unit was the rocky transition of our new graduate nurses (GNs) into clinical practice,” he says. “I mentored a group of GNs whose project for their nurse residency program was to create a buddy program that paired upcoming GNs with a buddy (who is a different person from their preceptor). This allowed them to integrate more easily into the culture and fellowship in the unit.”
Sala offers this advice to aspiring critical care nurses: “Work hard and study hard, and don’t lose sight of your goals. When you do rotations in nursing school, or work in any unit, find key mentors who can either directly guide you in the process of becoming a critical care nurse, or introduce you to people who can. Be inquisitive, read widely, and always ask questions.”
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