Since 1952, Bladen County Hospital has operated as a good Samaritan, assisting the people of the community and surrounding area with a personal touch and dedication that’s not as easy to find in big city medical centers.
And now, Bladen County Hospital is enhancing its service to older patients. Last year, the hospital’s Emergency Department earned certification as a Geriatric Emergency Department.
Susan Phelps, Chief Nursing Officer at Bladen County Hospital, prepared the application for the Geriatric Emergency Department designation. She called it part of a program that supports emergency medicine and standardizes the way hospitals do things.
“It’s the same kind of standardization or best practices associated with caring for the geriatric population,” Phelps said.
Phelps, who has been with Cape Fear Valley for 12 years, was working as the Corporate Service Line Director over the Emergency Department at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville when she first applied for the accreditation for that Emergency Department.
“So, I was familiar with the process,” Phelps said. “When I came here to Bladen as the Chief Nursing Officer, I moved forward with the process to do that same accreditation here in our Emergency Department. Then we received the letter that we had received that certification on a bronze level at Bladen.”
There are three levels of accreditation – bronze, silver and gold. The entry level is the bronze, which means the emergency department is “meeting the guidelines set forth by the American College of Emergency Physicians that you’ve done these things in relation to taking care of geriatric patients,” she said.
For Bladen County Hospital, this accreditation means "that we have the things we need, the expertise and equipment to provide geriatric patients with optimum care,” Phelps said.
The geriatric accreditation, Phelps said, is a big deal for any emergency department “to commit to this level of patient care.”
“We have to have education which is above and beyond the standard education,” she said. “I completed a course in geriatrics through the Emergency Nurses Association and American Geriatric Care.”
She said her physician leader, Brian Krakover, MD, also has additional training in geriatrics and who, in turn, can train the team and care for patients.
New aquarium is virtually peaceful
To further improve the Bladen County Hospital Emergency Department experience, the hospital installed a new 65-inch virtual aquarium screen on a wall in the waiting room of the Emergency Department, designed to ease the stress and fears that can come with a visit to the hospital.
Bladen County Hospital Foundation funded the virtual aquarium for the Bladen hospital.
It brings the beauty of lush freshwater aquariums and its computer-generated virtual inhabitants to, well … synthetic life.
Development Officer Kristen Carpenter works with Cape Fear Valley Health Foundation and the Bladen County Hospital Foundation.
“It’s like a TV, but it’s a virtual aquarium," Carpenter said. "So, you’ll see fish and different marine animals swimming along on the screen. And it helps creates a serene and peaceful environment in the waiting room. There’s also some calming music playing over the speakers. We understand that patients and families may be anxious and stressed when arriving to the ED and our hope is that the virtual aquarium will create a calmer environment.”