Nurse practitioner and physician assistant collaborative staffing innovations to improve a cardiovascular surgery...

Successful use of nurse practitioner (NP) and physician assistant (PA) care models is vital to delivering optimal patient care, maintaining financial stability, and reducing staff burnout and turnover.

A large cardiovascular surgery practice experienced substantial growth, leading to an obsolete NP and PA care model. Consequently, workplace satisfaction scores were reduced, and the NP and PA turnover rate in 2018 was unacceptably high.

A multidisciplinary redesign team was formed to address gaps in the care model through a quality-improvement initiative. The team analyzed current workflows, collected external and internal survey data, conducted patient tracers, and observed staff. Seventeen collaborative care models were proposed by frontline staff members and presented to their peers for feedback. This feedback was used to select the best aspects of the proposed models to create a new model.

The updated care model consisted of several key changes, which included reducing NP- and PA-to-patient ratios, eliminating redundant tasks, shifting from location-based to surgical team-based coverage, ensuring top-of-scope practice, developing specialty service lines, and separating inpatient and outpatient practices.

After implementation of the new care model, NP and PA turnover rates decreased from baseline by an average of approximately 74% per year. Departmental work culture scores concomitantly increased from 68% to 85% after implementation of the new care model.

Adapting care models in conjunction with departmental growth is crucial to enhancing staff satisfaction and reducing burnout.