Projects and Commitments
Statement of the academic societies of the Swiss Association for Nursing Science on the popular initiative "for strong nursing care"
The academic societies Acute Care, Education in Nursing, Gerontological Nursing, Home Care Nursing, Oncological Nursing, Pediatric Nursing, Psychiatric Nursing and Women’s Health are fully behind and clearly support the popular initiative "for strong nursing care".
Read here the statement
Top-5-List 2019
The Top 5 list (No-Gos) is now ready to be made public in institutions, for training purposes or simply for forwarding. Smarter medicine / Choosing Wisely Switzerland responded very quickly and very positively to the Top 5 list entry and will soon make it available on their homepage. The list exists only in German and French.
Symposium "What are 'No-Go's in geriatric care?" 2018
On 26 September 2018 the symposium "What are 'No-Go's in geriatric care? Recommendations based on the 'Choosing Wisely'-Initiative" with about 80 participants took place at the HEdS Fribourg. In the afternoon, the Academic Society for Gerontological Nursing presented a list of five interventions that should be avoided when caring for geriatric patients in clinical practice.
President Jeanine Altherr opened the symposium and explained her motivation to work on "Don't's" at Academic Society for Gerontological Nursing. Prof. em. Dr. Daniel Scheidegger, President of Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS), member of the board of the supporting association "smarter medicine - Choosing Wisely Switzerland" and member of the patronage committee of the VFP, gave a gripping keynote speech in which he explained in an entertaining way why the Choosing Wisely initiative is so important, what it means for the Swiss health care system and what role nurses can play in it. He motivated the participants and the VFP to submit top 5 lists to smarter medicine and actively participate in the campaign.
The five selected No-Go's were first presented in the plenum and then discussed in workshops - both took place in German- and French-speaking groups.
"Don’t let older adults lie in bed or only get up to a chair during their hospital stay." - Anja Ulrich and Manuela Wyss showed how elderly people can be mobilised in a motivating way by means of simple plans and pictures.
"Don’t use physical restraints with an older patient." - Jeanine Altherr and Corinne Steinbrüchel impressively demonstrated the negative spiral of fixation.
"Don’t wake the patient for routine care unless the patient’s condition or care specifically requires it." - the topic was presented by Andrea Christen and Natalie Battaglia and introduced with a quotation, according to which sleep for the whole person is what winding for the clock.
"Don’t place or maintain a urinary catheter in a patient unless there is a specific indication to do so." - Prof. Dr. Susi Saxer and Claudia Lötscher led this very technical, but no less important No-Go.
"Don’t administer “prn” (i.e., as needed) sedative, antipsychotic or hypnotic medications to prevent and/or treat delirium without first assessing for, removing and treating the underlying causes of delirium and using nonpharmacologic delirium prevention and treatment approaches." - Eva Ziegler and Dr. Franziska Zúñiga pointed out the urgency of non-pharmacological approaches to the prevention and treatment of delirium.
The French-speaking workshop on the five topics was led by Stephanie Kipfer and Dr. Cédric Mabire.
At the end, the discussions from the workshops were summarized in the plenum and the afternoon ended with an aperitif. We would like to thank the HEdS Fribourg for providing the premises and the organizing committee from Manuela Friedli, Dalit Jäckel, Stephanie Kipfer, Claudia Lötscher, Corinne Steinbrüchel and Eva Ziegler. The VFP will actively pursue the topic "Choosing Wisely".