Michael Borisko
‘My focus from the beginning of my nursing career has been to treat each patient as I would treat a member of my own family.’ — Joan Maguire, recipient of the Baxter Patient-Centered Care Award
Health
June 23, 2008 02:29 PM
beingwell magazine Summer 2008
By: Patrick Mangion
That momentary sharp pain from the prick of a medical needle can turn even the most stoic visage into a crimson red grimace.
While most of us would agree that being on the receiving end of an intravenous injection is among our least favourite encounters with medical professionals, veteran nurse Joan Maguire has turned her “gift” into a niche career, now in its 36th year.
“You can’t teach the feel that I have. I can teach technique … the mechanics of it. But not how I do it,” she says, at the conclusion of another shift at Newmarket’s Southlake Regional Health Centre.
She is the face behind PICC, Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter, a specialty program she developed more than 10 years ago. Inserted in the arm, the catheter from a PICC line connects to the body’s larger blood vessels in the chest.
It can take up to two hours to set up a PICC line. In a typical day, Ms Maguire will do two to four inserts. In 1998, she administered just 16 PICC lines at Southlake. Last year, that number grew to 400.
“It shows that it’s an important program,” she says. But her work is as much about trust and patient rapport, as it is technical, she explained. “My focus from the beginning of my nursing career has been to treat each patient as I would treat a member of my own family,” Ms Maguire says. “They, too, are somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son.”
Her hard work and dedication earned her the Baxter Patient-Centered Care Award last June. It’s one of eight awards of excellence handed out by Southlake annually to honour and recognize the exceptional work of staff, physicians and volunteers. “It is, in part, the high standard of clinical excellence that Joan expects of herself and works to promote in nursing colleagues (and colleagues in other disciplines whom she has taught, as well around the art and science of vascular access) that brings to light her commitment to being patient-centered,” says Pat Clifford, manager of professional resources and research ethics, who nominated her for the award.
“The expectation that patients should not be unduly inconvenienced with IV starts, should not be subjected to pain or discomfort with the insertion procedure and should be able to rely on the best technique, best equipment and safest and most efficient methodologies, is her standard.”
In spite of her focus on patients and being responsive to staff needs, Ms Maguire has not taken her eye off the future. Recently she has been behind a request for additional technology that will assist certain patients who have veins that are compromised, to be able to benefit from the insertion of IV lines that can remain in place for weeks or perhaps months. This technology will support an improved experience for those patients and for others in which the placement of the IV lines can now be seen with an ultrasound image instead of an X-ray.
Pat Clifford says it best: “From technology, to commitment, from teaching to flexibility, Joan has demonstrated her commitment to the work she does, to Southlake and to her patients.”