Community Ties

Oakland’s 2,100-student School of Nursing has been the obvious beneficiary of Orfgen’s vision.

The nursing skills lab in O’Dowd Hall was funded by Crittenton’s foundation as an initial phase of a long term partnership. That lab served as a template for how Oakland designed teaching lab space in the new building the School of Nursing will occupy next year.

The centerpiece of the connection between the OU School of Nursing and Crittenton is a relationship-based care agenda guided by Crittenton’s chief nursing officer Kathleen Van Wagoner.

“Caring, kindness, and compassion have been considered the ‘soft side’ of nursing,” says Van Wagoner. “As we have progressed on the relationship-based care journey it has become evident that it needs to valued as the hard side.”

Van Wagoner says nurses have been well educated in technical skills but both health care providers and nursing schools need to enhance proficiencies linked to developing meaningful relationships with patients.

“How do I develop a relationship with the patient and family” is the key question, she says.

Van Wagoner is fond of telling the story of an elderly patient brought in via EMS to Crittenton’s emergency room.

“She arrived alone, and as the nurse was completing the assessment and health history, she learned that the patient’s biggest concern was for her unattended pet at home,” Van Wagoner says. “We needed to eliminate that concern before we could treat her effectively. If we don’t find the human connection with our patients, we won’t learn about the things that have the potential to get in the way of their healing.”

Once hospital staff found a solution to the “home-alone” pet, the patient relaxed and was more able to deal with the medical issues at hand.

Van Wagoner has expanded the relationship-based care concept beyond nursing, encouraging staff members in ancillary and support roles the opportunity to experience and learn.

To foster development of relationship-based care, Crittenton has funded an endowed professorship at OU. While OU recruits someone of national stature to fill the position, it is bringing in national experts to provide guidance to the university and the hospital on relationship-based care.

Crittenton nurses have developed five published scholarly articles on relationship-based care in the past year, and currently are writing a book to be published later this year.

“We’ve become a national leader in this approach,” says Orfgen. “Health care is difficult to navigate, and we want to put the patient at the center.”

He credits Van Wagoner’s passion for driving Crittenton’s success in this arena, and notes the partnership with the university helps effect changes in the hospital’s approach to patient care.

“We have a very good relationship with OU, and it has the potential of being a great relationship,” according to Orfgen.

Darlene Scott-Baer, interim nursing dean at OU, says the university has a special cohort of 30 students who receive most of their clinical rotations at Crittenton as part of the relationship-based care program.

“It is a different kind of bonding between nurses and patients,” says Schott-Baer.

Rochester’s 290-bed Crittenton Hospital Medical Center and Oakland University grew up together. The Rochester facility opened its doors in 1967, just a decade after Alfred and Matilda Wilson donated their land to establish Oakland University.