A year of improvements with DVH’s chief of nursing, Teresa Hern

As Desert View Hospital prepares to celebrate 20 years of serving the local community, one of this critical access hospital’s leaders is marking a milestone of her own. Chief Nursing Officer Teresa Hern officially reached her one-year anniversary with DVH on March 24 and with more than 12 months now under her belt, she’s excited to continue her work of bettering the hospital in any way she can.

Hern has been in the nursing sector for many years but she didn’t originally intend on making health care her career. In her early 20s, she worked as a real estate agent but life’s circumstances, as they often do, changed her trajectory and eventually led her down a different path.

“I had great neighbor who was a nurse. I just loved her compassion and her caring. She would help with my son who, as a boy, was always getting into some kind of scrape. And of course, I didn’t want to keep bothering her every time my son needed something and I wanted her eyes. So, I thought, I need to learn this myself,” Hern detailed in an April 20 interview with the Pahrump Valley Times.

Despite drawing inspiration from her neighbor, Hern didn’t immediately leap into nursing. First, she decided to test herself to see if health care was truly a match for her, starting with a stint as a certified nursing assistant (CNA). After she was certain, she started courses to become an licensed practical nurse. While working in this capacity for a home health company, she received a grant from that company and was able to study to become a registered nurse.

Hern has spent the past 18 years with the Valley Health system, of which DVH is a part, beginning with 15 years at Valley Hospital. She then transferred to Spring Valley Hospital, where she worked for a year before coming over to DVH.

Changes implemented under Hern’s leadership

As for the improvements Hern has implemented over the course of her time with DVH, there have been many, with Hern and DVH Marketing and Outreach Coordinator Ryan Muccio hitting some of the biggest highlights.

“When I came here, I really quickly noticed, we had 18 travel nurses – those are nurses who do not live here but who come here and do a 13-week stint and then move on to the next assignment,” Hern said of one major change. “And I love travelers, I did a travel assignment once in Reno. But I thought 18 was too many for our little facility. They are very expensive and I wanted that community buy-in from our nurses. So, we worked very hard to shift away from travelers and of the new RNs we have hired, I would say probably 90% live here in town.”

“That’s huge,” Muccio chimed in.

Today, there are no in-country travel nurses working at DVH, with one international traveler, which is a different program that comes with a 3-year contract rather than 13 weeks.

On the continuing education front, Hern said training and education are key aspects of focus for her.

“When I started, one thing I wanted was to make sure all of my clinical supervisors get the leadership classes that we have available with Universal Health Services. All of our leaders got those M3 classes,” Hern reported. “They all also got preceptor classes, because they are going to teach. I need them to teach and they need to be able to do that appropriately.”

She’s also established regular education on specific subjects, which take place at least monthly. One subject addressed has been fall risks, which have been reduced in the past year.

“We had 63 falls last year, so I realized right away that we weren’t fully utilizing the tools we already have,” Hern explained. “So, we got education out for that, as well as some equipment that staff had asked for to help prevent falls. I’m always an advocate of ‘keeping grandma safe’.

“Another topic we did was pressure wounds. We enhanced and reinforced education about that and we got some upgraded equipment to help prevent hospital-acquired wounds. We also put up some simple ‘cue to turn’ signs that say, ‘turn every two hours’,” Hern added.

Hern herself makes rounds every day, visiting with each patient first by herself and then later with the physician, the primary nurse, the clinical supervisor and physical therapy, if available. “When we come in as a team like that, some people can get overwhelmed. It helps if they know what to expect beforehand, so I always go in and talk to them alone first. After the team visit, I make a list of who is being discharged and I go back to those folks to check in before they leave and remind them about our survey.”

However, she cannot be on the floor every minute of every day and that was why she concentrated on getting 24-hour coverage by a clinical supervisor, which in now in place.

Muccio made sure to touch on the hospital’s Nurse Apprentice Program (NAP), as well, of which Hern is very proud.

“The NAP has been amazing. We had a lot of NAPs here when I arrived and I felt the program could use some different guidelines,” Hern said. “In this program, they are in school to be a nurse and when I was across the mountains at Spring Valley, any NAP I had, I scheduled as a CNA. They did not get the benefit of being paired with a nurse.

“Here, we are pairing them with a nurse. They get to work side-by-side with a nurse so, when they graduate and they pass their boards, they hit the ground running. And I hire them!” Hern continued. “The three I hired last year are still with us and I just hired two that will be graduating in May. Once they pass their boards, they will already be onboarded. They already know everything here – they know our charting, they know our facility, they know our patients. I love it.”

“And keeping those people in the community is incredible. Instead of working in Vegas or moving somewhere else, they are keeping their families here,” Muccio said.

Other accomplishments the two touched on was an increase in patient experience scores and their likelihood of recommending DVH, along with ongoing policy updates and post-discharge follow-up calls to every patients that utilizes the hospital. Hern also contacts each person who comes into the hospital and, for one reason or another, leaves prior to being seen, to check in on them and ensure they no longer need to be seen.

“It’s really just about being present, honestly,” Hern said in summary of the improvements seen under her leadership.

“I think that’s really important,” Muccio noted. “A lot of times, CNOs are in an office, because there are a lot of administrative tasks that have to be done. But you will constantly see here out on the floor. She rounds every single day on every patient. She’s everywhere!”

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com