Fitsi Health founder Kathleen Puri, MSN, RN is thrilled and honored to be the winner of the 2019 American Nurses Association Innovation Award!
Hand hygiene is the best method to prevent the transmission of infections. Hand hygiene for hospitalized patients sounds obvious – something that should be easy to accomplish and regarded as important to the patient experience. However, patient hand hygiene is a problem for most hospitals today. It is difficult to accomplish and not monitored by healthcare personnel. No infection preventionist will argue against the importance of patient hand hygiene. However, since it is neither prioritized nor measured by hospitals, it falls through the cracks. This, coupled with the fact that more and more research points to patients as the “missing link” in infection control efforts means that, in order to reduce hospital acquired infections (HAIs), hospitals need dedicated efforts to improve patient hand hygiene. Key to achieving these efforts is empowering patients to make hand hygiene easy to do on their own and to understand the critical importance cleaning their hands plays in preventative care.
Kathleen Puri had been a nurse for many years, but it wasn’t until she became a hospital patient that the issue of hospital patient hygiene began to truly bother her. She noticed that patients confined to a hospital bed had no way to conveniently and easily wash their hands — one of the easiest ways to prevent the almost 100,000 deaths (more than those caused by diabetes or breast and prostate cancer combined) attributed to infections acquired in hospitals annually.
Defining five specific events or “moments” in the day of the patient was found to help patients remember when to perform hand hygiene.
Nurses are pulled in so many different directions which impacts the time spent being with their patients. In my personal experience, patients that perceive nurses as too busy to talk to them are more anxious and uncertain about their care.
Every nurse knows it, feels it and wishes it was not so. Fatigue is our companion. The longer our day, the more intense our day, and the more shifts worked close to each other, the more fatigue we experience. Now a recent research study from the Journal of Applied Psychology has studied healthcare worker fatigue […]
Hi I’m Kathy. I’m a nurse, and I created Fitsi, a simple, low cost solution for reducing healthcare acquired infections and improving patient comfort. Let me tell you more about it… Nobody goes to the hospital to get sick. But in the US, 1 in 20 patients will contract a Healthcare Acquired Infection. That […]
In a previous interview, Nancy Moughrabi, FNP-BC nominated Erin Peters to participate in Fitsi’s Nurses Spotlight series. She is a hospital based nurse practitioner, caring for pediatric general surgery patients at Children’s at Erlanger. She shares what her ideal pediatric hospital environment would look like and how to create a great patient experience for both pediatric patients and parents.
Patient safety is finally receiving the notice it deserves. At last month's Patient Safety Summit in Irvine, CA, big names including Bill Clinton and Joe Bidden spoke to increase awareness on issues that effect our healthcare system today and the need for better measures to prevent spreadable infections.
We interviewed Ann Schide, MSN, RN, MS, CLNC, LCCE, BSC, an Associate Professor at Chattanooga State Community College. A very committed, caring and innovative nurse..."I speak not from arrogance, but from self-confidence. I believe strongly in this type of advocacy for our health care system and those who need it."
Lives and money are saved with infection prevention programs. A recent study released last week by the CDC demonstrates that patients who had infections while in an intensive care unit were 35% more likely to die within the following 5 years. It is a very powerful study and one that should be a red flag to hospitals across the nation.
We at Fitsi love design almost as much as we love nurses. So who better to interview than Debbie Gregory, a nurse who also holds a degree in interior design! Based on her 30 years of experience as a nurse, healthcare consultant, and interior designer, Debbie is an industry leading advocate for clinical representation to build functional healthcare environments that improve safety, efficiency, and patient outcomes.
We interviewed Barbara M. Topf, RN, MA, an early pioneer in the field of infection control. She has co-authored several articles about infection control as well as presented nationally to nurses, physicians, and surgical assistant students on the topic and was an active member of the Association of Practitioners in Infection Control.
We interviewed John Ekholm, Fitsi Health's Director of Product Design, on designing for medical spaces and how he collaborated with Fitsi Founder, Kathleen Puri, RN to design Fitsi. John holds a B.A. in Biological Science from the University of Chicago as well as a master's degree in Product Design and Development from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Fitsi is a product created by a nurse. So to celebrate the work that so many nurses do, we decided to feature them on our blog! For our first in the Nurses Spotlight series, we interviewed Nancy Moughrabi, FNP-BC from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Nancy graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She worked in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at T.C. Thompson Childrens Hospital for five years before pursing her Masters in Nursing as a Family Nurse Practitioner. She started her career as a Nurse Practitioner in 2009 and has worked in a pediatric and family practice settings in the community. She lives with her husband, Nadeem, and two children, Mason and Ellie.
Today, the New York Academy of Medicine is honoring Elaine Larson, the 2014 recipient of the John Stearns Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Clinical Practice. Larson, a pioneer in promoting hand hygiene for infection prevention and control, is also the first nurse to receive this distinguished honor.
A recent study published in the online medical journal of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology reported that hospital patients washed their hands only 30% of the time when visiting the bathroom (12,000 bathroom visits were observed in the Toronto based study). When entering or leaving a room the rate of hand washing for patients was a dismal 5%.
Antibiotics are a life-saving and life-altering resource. Quality of life as well as life span are affected by illnesses and the antibiotics that treat them. Unfortunately, antibiotic resistance is a global public health problem...
Fitsi is the gift that moms will thank you for over and over again! The #1 way to prevent your kids from getting sick is to keep their hands clean - Fitsi makes this easy to do from the moment they enter this world.
As a new mom, you may have read lists upon lists of what to pack in your hospital bag as you prepare for your due date. Consumed by bringing your newborn back in the perfect layette, you may forget to bring yourself some health and beauty essentials to make your hospital stay a bit more comfortable...
We interviewed Penny Merkel, a registered nurse with 40 years (and over 2,000 couples) of childbirth education experience. She is an accredited Leclaire Hypnobirthing Instructor, a Certified Lamaze Instructor and also a Lamaze Breastfeeding Support Specialist. In addition, Penny is also a Senior Childbirth Instructor at Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. She is […]
Providing hand hygiene supplies along with educating patients and visitors about the importance of hand hygiene is critical.