Presidential awards
Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point (RMCBP) has announced that two of its volunteers have been awarded the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, which comes from the office of the President of the United States.
The award was initiated to acknowledge the outstanding achievements of volunteers and volunteering throughout the nation.
Recipients receive a certificate, an order of congratulations from the President, a pin and a gold medallion.
Joanne Van Atta has been a volunteer at RMCBP for more than 17 years and has logged more than 16,000 hours of service. During most of that time, Van Atta assisted in the Outpatient Lab. She also received the Volunteer of the Quarter in 2011 and Volunteer of the Year in 2016.
Carol Del Santo began volunteering at RMCBP 30 years ago and has accumulated more than 16,000 hours of service. Del Santo began as a courier and now volunteers as a courier dispatcher. She also was selected as the Volunteer of the Quarter and received Volunteer of the Year in 2018.
Technology grant
A team of scientists from the University of South Florida has been awarded a Rapid Response Research Grant from the National Science Foundation (about $167,000), to advance its efforts to establish technology that can rapidly sterilize and electrostatically recharge N95 respiratory masks.
The technology, designed to fight coronavirus, uses corona discharge and low-temperature atmospheric pressure plasma, and works to deactivate pathogens on a mask and restore its electrostatic charges.
Patient safety grade
AdventHealth Dade City has earned a Leapfrog “B” grade, from the Leapfrog Group, for patient safety.
AdventHealth acquired AdventHealth Dade City on April 1, 2018, and the hospital has worked to attain excellence in patient safety. The “B” grade shows the hospital does a better job at protecting patients from mistakes, injuries, accidents and infections than it did prior to acquisition.
According to a news release, leaders at AdventHealth Dade City continue to implement key strategies to enhance patient safety, including:
- Tele-ICU, which provides critically ill patients immediate access to critical care intensivists and nurses, via tele-monitoring and direct communication
- Electronic health records, which allow physicians to place the patient medication orders directly into the computer and allow nurses to scan a patient’s medications prior to administering them. This has shown to significantly decrease medication errors to the patients.
- A full-time clinical quality analyst who reviews patient records daily to address any potential patient quality issues
- A strong commitment to understanding the culture of safety with all care team members
