Mobility Minute Podcast

Welcome to the mobility minute podcast. This is our first episode of season 2 and we are super excited to kick off a new season with even more content on hospital patient mobility. We have an awesome lineup of clinicians, academics, and other key stakeholders dedicated to patient outcomes.

I am your host Drew Martin – but our focus today is on critical care physical therapy. Our guest Heidi Engel, PT, DPT has spent over 34 years in healthcare and has focused the last 11 years on ICU mobility. She leads physical therapy for a large academic healthcare center in San Francisco where she has been instrumental in establishing mobility initiatives. Heidi has published work regarding the ICU liberation campaign and A to F bundle. As you hear in the upcoming session, she is very keen on the physiological impacts of walking and shares her perspectives on humanizing a critically ill patient. Family engagement is extremely important to Heidi’s ICU, and she believes patient and family buy-in is essential to the execution of critical care mobility.

We get into all these topics and more during our conversation so let’s get right into it…

Welcome to another episode of the Mobility Minute Podcast - actually the 10th and final episode of Season 1. We've had some wonderful guests throughout the first season from traveling nurses to an ergonomics expert to a patient experiencing a blood clot and subsequent pulmonary embolism. We've covered a lot. Thank you to our listeners, guests, and those who may be listening for the first time. This podcast is a place for thoughtful discussion on patient mobility and how mobility factors into recovery.

Today, we speak with critical care nurse, Alison Cassina. In the ICU, mobility can fall down the priority list (and for good reason). Oftentimes bedside caregivers are unsure which direction to take when starting the rehabilitation journey for a patient. Critical care nurse, Alison Cassina knows this reality firsthand and has prioritized mobility for even the most acutely ill patients. She shares with us her team's approach to mobility with an ECMO patient who had to prove a certain standard of mobility before receiving a lung transplant.  

All of this and more on the Mobility Minute Podcast!

Today we speak with Dr, Juliessa Pavon, MD.

Dr. Pavon is a researcher and associate professor at Duke University and is associated with the Durham V. A. for geriatrics. During our conversation, we get into the importance of mobility measurement, and some of Dr. Pavon’s research revolves around using accelerometer data to measure mobility in the hospital. And one of the key takeaways from our conversation really talks about objective data and the best way to use objective data in order to improve clinical practice. Just like many things in life, it is often hard to improve on something until you measure it. And that's something that Dr. Pavon’s research has really highlighted.

Today we speak with Dian Baker (Ph.D., RN, APRN-BC).

Dian has been a thought leader in pneumonia prevention in the hospital, and her work has highlighted hospital-acquired pneumonia, the #1 hospital-acquired infection, as an underrepresented problem in hospitals across the country. During our conversation, we talk about the importance of mobility when it comes to preventing pneumonia in the hospital and some of the simple steps that bedside caregivers can take in order to improve outcomes.

Today we have Kevin Brueilly, PT, Ph.D.

Brueilly's background in education and physical therapy clinical practice came full circle when he was diagnosed with a saddle pulmonary embolism in January of 2019. In this episode - we detail Kevin's lessons from going through this scary situation and how his focus has since shifted to bringing awareness and research around post-op recovery and mobility. 

Today we speak with Kali Dayton.

Kali Dayton (AGACNP-BC, DNP) is a nurse practitioner from Utah with experience both as a traveling nurse, and in her hospital's 'Awake and Walking' ICU. She noticed some major differences with how patient sedation was handled based on the hospital system and this revelation has led her to start a podcast of her own, called Walking Home from the ICU. Her goal is to discover the true impacts of sedation in the ICU and how many times patients are unnecessarily administered drugs that lead to more harm than good. On her show, she interviews survivors dealing with post-ICU PTSD and clinicians who understand that even the most critical patient needs mobility.

Dr. Fragala has over 45 years of experience as a healthcare professional and is recognized as one of the pioneers of Safe Patient Handling and Mobility efforts in the United States. He has lectured throughout the world and is a recognized international expert in the application of ergonomics to the healthcare setting.  Currently he helps and supports a number of organizations, vendors and facilities with their safe patient handling and mobility efforts.  In 2012 he was awarded the National Advocacy Award for Improved Caregiver Safety and in 2017 awarded the Bernice Owen Safe Patient Handling and Mobility Research Award.  His book entitled, Ergonomics: How to Contain On-the-Job Injuries in Healthcare, published by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, has influenced much of the work today related to healthcare ergonomics and safe patient handling and mobility programs.     

This episode we speak with Teresa Boynton. 

Teresa Boynton, MS, OTR, CSPHP is currently an independent Safe Patient Handling Mobility (SPHM) and Bedside Mobility Assessment Tool (BMAT) consultant. She previously worked for Hill-Rom as a Clinical Consultant assisting healthcare facilities across the U.S. to build and sustain SPHM programs with a focus on improving patient outcomes while increasing caregiver safety using a standardized assessment linked to SPHM interventions. Prior to this, she worked for Banner Health for over 26 years.  In 2001, she became the Banner Health “Ergonomics and Injury Prevention Specialist.” In 2003 with the goal of establishing SPHM programs system-wide, she began work on what became the Banner “Bedside Mobility Assessment Tool (BMAT) – a validated nurse-driven tool for assessing current mobility status based on objective findings. From 2011 through 2015, she led the Banner Health combined “Safe Patient Handling and Falls Prevention Team.”  Other projects include using the HFMEA model to develop algorithms, a standardized care path, and appropriate equipment bundle for patients-of-size; standardizing workers’ compensation injury coding, tracking and trending for effective injury prevention action planning; reviewing FDA medical device adverse events reports related to sling and lift safety issues, and participating with a team that wrote the “Healthcare Recipient Sling and Lift Hanger Bar Compatibility Guidelines.” Teresa is certified by the Association of Safe Patient Handling Professionals (ASPHP).

Today we speak with Jo Ann Brooks.

 Jo Ann (Ph.D RN FAAN FCCP) is a quality and safety consultant who’s been in healthcare for over 45 years.  She retired from IU Health, a multi-hospital healthcare system based in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the end of 2018 where she was System VP of Patient Safety and Quality. She currently consults for healthcare organizations, pharma, and medical technology in the areas of healthcare safety and quality, CMS Pay for Performance, and prevention of non-ventilator hospital acquired pneumonia.