Every one of the 10 nurses at Jefferson Healthcare’s Family Birth Center – including nurse director Kirsten Pickard – is being honored on Friday for their “mother-friendly” care.
Jefferson Healthcare is the first – and so far, only – hospital in the country to be given that recognition.
Marilyn Hilderth, chair of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, said on Monday that what she learned from interviewing all of those nurses is that they not only respect the wishes of the mother, but work as a team with health-care providers.
“The main theme would be respect for the mother,” said Hilderth of why she was so impressed with the nurses at Jefferson Healthcare’s Family Birth Center. “They protected the mother’s birth wishes.
“The other theme that sat me down was the team approach between health-care providers, the doctors and the nurses,” Hilderth said.
Hilderth presents honorary pins to the nurses in a special ceremony on Friday, Dec. 9 at the hospital.
Pickard said Hilderth was so excited that the entire department had taken the time to meet the requirements that she didn’t want to “just stick the pins in the mail.”
In addition to Pickard, nurses being recognized are Marly Yourish, Kelly Traenkenschuh, Anna Wallin, Anne Beers, Melanee Knudsen, Barbara Heckathron, Tanya Foldager, Katie Johnston, Clare Sherley, Penny Lawrence and per diem nurse Jen Patterson.
“We’re very, very proud and very, very excited about this week,” Pickard said of the honor.
The hospital delivers between 110 and 120 babies a year, and Pickard said she’d love to increase that number to 300 a year because “we could do a baby a day.”
In fact, going through a World Health Organization “baby-friendly” designation is next on Pickard’s to-do list.
“It usually takes four years, but I’m pretty sure we can do it this year. We kind of do it already,” Pickard said. There are four steps to that process, and the hospital already is achieving the second step. There are only 112 hospitals in the U.S. with that designation, she said.
Essays and interviews
Penny Lawrence, a nurse who has been at the Port Townsend hospital for 16 years, 10 of those in the birthing center, said on Dec. 5 that nurses not only had to answer questions, but also write essays about their practices, participate in an hour-long phone interview with Hilderth and obtain letters of recommendation.
“Why we stand out is that we are the only birth center in the country where we all practice with similar goals in mind. We support mother-friendly practices,” Lawrence said.
Hilderth said she was impressed that Jefferson Healthcare nurses not only understood that a woman might want a natural birth, but that “they were able to provide a home-birth-like atmosphere and bring that into a safe hospital setting.”
That said, Hilderth noted that if a woman wants epidural support, nurses respect those wishes as well.
The coalition is an organization of individuals and other national groups that are interested in the well-being of mothers, babies and families, and whose mission is to “promote a wellness model of maternity care that will improve birth outcomes and substantially reduce costs,” its website boasts.
“The designation recognizes hospitals which adhere to those evidence-based care delivery practices shown to provide the best outcomes for mothers and babies during labor and delivery,” the website states.
See motherfriendly.org for details.
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