Donors improve patient care at Bismarck

Sanford Bismarck Same Day Surgery patient rooms now equipped with fixed digital vital sign monitors.

Donors improve patient care at Bismarck

Staff and patients at Sanford Bismarck Same Day Surgery are benefiting from donor support.

Each of the program’s 29 patient rooms now features a digital vital sign monitor, made possible by a general endowment fund grant from the Sanford Health Foundation West Region. Since the new monitors were installed, caretakers can work more efficiently and deliver a better patient experience.

“Our goal is making our patients’ stay here the best it can be,” said Sharon Malm, director of inpatient nursing at Sanford Bismarck. “We’re so grateful to have the foundation supporting our strive to be the best at providing quality care.”

Before the new monitors, nursing staff used free-standing blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters and thermometers, which were shared between patient rooms. Each staff member would spend 10 to 15 minutes collecting vital signs and manually recording each measurement to transcribe in the patient’s medical record.

With the new monitors, mounted in each patient room, the process takes half the time and results are automatically recorded in patients’ charts.

“Until you experience a day in our shoes and see the difference this improvement makes, you’ll never realize how appreciative we are to receive this support,” Malm said.

Gifts to the foundation’s general endowment fund give Sanford Health’s leadership the flexibility to distribute philanthropic gifts toward areas of greatest need, whether related to patient care, research or education.

“The foundation does a number of things throughout the hospital that make this a better place for our patients and our community,” said John Emerson, inpatient clinical care leader at Sanford Bismarck. “They provide an integral resource for the hospital and its important needs that can help us improve our efficiencies, customer service and really take our care above and beyond.

Posted In Bismarck, Foundation, News