Tennessee Tech Whitson-Hester School of Nursing’s partnership with Cookeville Regional Medical Center has proven to be successful for Nursing research.
Tennessee Tech Nurse Research Liaison Dr. Susan Piras said the partnership began in 2019 and has since completed several research publications around bedside nurses in the ICU. Piras said the partnership has allowed CRMC bedside nurses in the ICU to do research.
“I’m able to work alongside them, I’m able to, we’ve gone to conferences and they have presented for CRMC what’s been going on in the ICU, different initiatives that have gone on, and they basically are representing this hospital,” Piras said.
Piras said other hospitals are using the research publications to duplicate CRMC’s ICU processes. Piras said working with CRMC to conduct nursing research has been a win-win partnership.
“We bring nursing students to your hospital all the time,” Piras said. “And we are always indebted for that mutual relationship, and it’s a way to kind of work at the bedside still and elevate the good work that they are doing.”
Piras said one research project Tennessee Tech is working on is keeping digital diaries in the ICU.
“ICU diaries are part of an initiative to help with the incidents of ICU delirium and patients that are critical survivors,” Piras said. “So it’s kind of the idea of when the patient is sedated and maybe really, really sick, the family writes in diaries. What we have been finding, and I’m sure you can appreciate this, is that the actual writing in diaries, there’s a generation change now. So people who are like in their 20s don’t necessarily write in diaries as much as people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. So we are gonna be looking at digital diaries, and we are gonna see does that work better for people.”
Piras said she feels that the partnership has reached most of its goals. Piras told CRMC’s board of trustees that one of the goals she feels like she has not met is assisting in acquiring funding for nursing research.
“It takes a lot of work cause you have to write grants, and grants take a lot of time,” Piras said. “And I am talking about funding from private or public grant opportunities.”
Piras said she hopes the partnership will further help CRMC medical professionals talk about what is going on at CRMC and realize that they work at a great institution.
