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Monte Nido Nursing Program

Monte Nido & Affiliates Vice President of Nursing Lyn Goldring, RN, BN, CEDRN helped to create the current nursing program, and currently oversees the well being of clients and the team of nurses. In this week’s blog post, Lyn dives into the passion and dedication behind the Monte Nido nursing program.

Research now supports the notion that a well-integrated nursing team improves client outcomes. Hundreds of clients have now experienced the gentle touch and wisdom from the hands of our Monte Nido Nurses. At the nucleus of this holistic delivery of care is a well-structured framework of systems, assessment tools and regulated policies and procedures. This framework has organically grown and expanded in response to the ever-changing landscape of our clients’ needs.

As in all systems, it is vital to have a leader placed within the facility that can oversee the framework daily. This leader is the on-site Nurse Manager—a role that is often met with confusion! Within a behavioral health setting the therapists have a clear role and all disciplines fundamentally understand “what they do”, like with Doctors and Dieticians. Although, in many others programs, and even within our own programs, the question arises “what do nurses do?” Most of the team knows that nurses hand out medications and take orders from doctors, and they are not incorrect, as this is part of the job description. However, this archaic model, which is often used at other programs, results in a fragmented team, medication errors and nurses that just feel “out of the loop” and become disenfranchised.

Back in 2005, with the support of Carolyn Costin, my mission was to create a nursing program that was integrated, holistic and wellness focused. I wanted to help change the client’s relationship to their bodies while therapeutically they were changing their relationship to food. I found that nurses had to learn the therapeutic language in order to be able to speak and connect with clients about their somatic experience while going through the painful process of therapy.

With the guidance of Doctors and therapists, we developed a nursing program that holistically looked at care and increased the support to the client via the art of nursing. The Nurse Manager is at the center of all that occurs for the client. The Nurse Manager goes to groups, sits in all doctor sessions so that she disseminate the information to the rest of the team and avoids client splitting. The Nurse Manager is involved with UR calls and has therefore contributed to extended length of stay because the medical piece is well represented.

We like to “grow our own” nurses and recruit from within. In an ever expanding company and many more sites later, the basic principles have been successfully duplicated at all our residential sites. Our Monte Nido Nurses are invested and work diligently daily at caring for our complicated and dynamically compromised clients. Yes, we give medications and we take Doctors orders but we also take the time to sit, to listen, to guide and to witness the most magnificent journeys into recovery. Our clients reward us daily with a smile with a hug with a thank you. The connections and relationships that get built between our nurses and the clients extend way past their time with us.

With that said we have more to do! Most recently I became a CEDRN, this coveted certification obtained from IAEDP is an acknowledgement that the RN is a certified eating disorder specialist. There are to date around 5-6 of us across the country. I believe the next step for our Monte Nido Nurses is for them to all to become certified. This would officially set us apart as the specialists we are. It would march our cause further in the eating disorder community and we would obtain international recognition.

I believe that education is key and that “paying it forward” is a way in which we can continue to constantly teach and again “grow our own”. Therefore we are currently looking to create a Monte Nido New Grad program for nurses just out of school. Becoming specialized in eating disorders and dedicating a nursing career in this field is, I believe, one of the most rewarding experiences a nurse can have.

 

For more information about Monte Nido please call 888.228.1253, visit our website and connect with us on FacebookLinkedInTwitter, and Instagram.