WARWICK – Individuals from throughout the state were recently honored at “Celebration of Excellence in Hospital Care,” an annual awards ceremony held by the Hospital Association of Rhode Island. HARI’s board of trustees recognized employees of the year from HARI’s member hospitals for their exemplary performance and dedication to health care; recipients of the Edward J. Quinlan Award for Patient Safety Excellence were also honored.
HARI reported that these individuals received the Award for Excellence in Hospital Care: Butler Hospital’s Geralyn Gabriel, an executive secretary who lives in Warwick; Fatima Hospital’s Keri Kinniburgh, an occupational therapy assistant who lives in Cumberland; Diane Ardito, of Warwick, a registered nurse at Kent Hospital; Christopher Wethey, a programmer/analyst at Landmark Medical Center, of Blackstone, Mass.; Patricia Masse, a Memorial Hospital cook who lives in Pawtucket; Jeannie Ursillo, a nurse practitioner at the Providence VA Medical Center who lives in Smithfield; Daniel Albuquerque, of North Smithfield, an HVAC mechanic at Roger Williams Medical Center; Diane Benson, South County Hospital case manager, social worker, of East Greenwich; Carol Desillier, supervisor of Westerly Hospital’s lobby shop who resides in Mystic, Conn.; and Women & Infants Hospital Oncology Nurse Navigator Sheila Enderby, of Providence.
The Providence VA Medical Center and Westerly Hospital received the Edward J. Quinlan Award for Patient Safety Excellence. The team at the Providence VA Medical Center was honored for successfully reducing the occurrence of health care-associated infections. They successfully implemented a bundle of infection control strategies including environmental management, hand hygiene, contact precautions and cultural transformation, said HARI. The Providence VA Medical Center also implemented an antimicrobial stewardship that has resulted in shorter lengths of stays, fewer adverse drug events and a significant decrease in the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
HARI said that Westerly Hospital was honored for being the first hospital in Rhode Island to embark on a journey toward high reliability, a proven science involving specific safety behaviors and techniques designed to make hospitals safer for patients, staff and visitors.
The award is a tribute to Edward Quinlan, who championed quality improvement and patient safety initiatives while he served as HARI president for two decades.
