News You Can Use

(From the February 2025 issue of MedStat)

2025 Physician Recognition Award Nominations

The Medical Staff Recognition Committee is accepting nominees for the 2025 Career Contribution Award, Golden Stethoscope Award, Art of Medicine Award and Outstanding Community-Based Award. The recipients of these awards will be recognized at the Physician Recognition Awards event on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at the Nationwide Children’s Conference Center. The guidelines and nomination form can be found in the MedStat email PDF attachment. Additionally, nomination forms were sent on February 1 via SurveyMonkey. Nomination forms should be returned to the attention of Yvonne Jackson in the Medical Staff Office by March 31.

Center for Clinical Excellence Quality Awards 2024

Nationwide Children’s Center for Clinical Excellence recently awarded the Asthma Collaborative and the Nephrotoxic Acute Kidney Injury Reduction Team with Quality Awards for their efforts and success.

Asthma Collaborative

The asthma core team has improved the quality of asthma care at Nationwide Children’s for over 10 years.

  • Increased utilization of Asthma Specialty clinics by over 100 visits per month and increased the rate of patients completing asthma education by over 20% in 2024.
  • Implemented a more efficient albuterol nebulizer treatment, leading to decreased length of stay for patients who received albuterol nebulizer treatment in 2024.
  • Consistently met national benchmarks for hospitalized patients’ length of stay and return rates.
  • Provided access to specialty services in the community, offering patients more specialized care, in-home nursing and options to receive controller medications at school.

Nephrotoxic Acute Kidney Injury Prevention

The Nephrotoxic Acute Kidney Injury (NAKI) reduction team addresses one of the most frequent hospital-acquired harms detected in children’s hospitals. Since 2020, the NAKI reduction team’s primary goal has been to minimize nephrotoxic medication exposures and resultant NAKI events across the hospital, thereby improving patient safety and outcomes. NAKI is linked to chronic kidney disease, longer hospital stays and higher costs.

  • Enhanced decision support tools, providing education for providers and pharmacists, and improving data accessibility.
  • Identified unit and service-level champions to ensure all staff are engaged and aware of best practices.
  • Statistically significant reductions in NAKI exposures in non-ICU, CTICU and PICU areas, along with notable decreases in NAKI events within CTICU and PICU units.
  • Improved surveillance tools in units that encounter specific challenges for NAKI.

Amy Valasek, MD, Recognized With Community Leadership Award

Nationwide Children's Hospital Medical Professional

Amy Valasek, MD, recently received the 2024 President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition Community Leadership Award, which recognizes individuals who drive stronger, healthier communities through initiatives in sports, exercise, wellness and nutrition. She was selected as one of 20 recipients nationally. When Dr. Valasek went to Washington, D.C. to accept the award, she was inspired by all the incredible ways people around the nation are working to promote movement within their communities. The experience particularly strengthened her passion to help those who cannot afford to participate in travel sports or costly athletic programs.

Resources for Supporting Healthy Teen Relationships

 

The Center for Family Safety and Healing’s Green Flags campaign offers a positive and approachable framework to help teens build skills and foster healthy relationships. This initiative provides education on the characteristics of healthy relationships, how to set boundaries and how to recognize signs of abuse. Additionally, it offers resources to address and prevent abuse. Click here to request a Green Flags training for your department, a toolkit or other printed resources.