Listening to nurses

When babies from Florida’s Panhandle kept showing up with similar heart defects, UF Health Shands nurse Alexandria Owens knew something was not right. “We’d hear about a patient being transported from the Panhandle. A lot of the nurses on the unit would talk about the clusters of the patients we’d get from that region with single ventricle defects, specifically hypoplastic left heart syndrome. We’d wonder if the incoming patient was another, similar patient,” said Owens, a charge nurse in the pediatric cardiac ICU and a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida College of Nursing . Owens wondered if the cases were related to PFAS, chemicals once used extensively, including in firefighting foams. The same foams were used at military installations in the Panhandle and across the country. She wondered if these babies had PFAS in their blood. But she had no way to find out, until 2022 when UF Health and the UF College of Nursing announced funding for research demonstration projects submitted by teams of bedside nurses paired with College of Nursing faculty. Angela Starkweather , assistant dean for research development at the college, hoped they would get at least two good submissions. They got two dozen. “Nurses have a lot of passion for what they do. This project gave them a voice so they could improve patient care. This effort has been a model across the nation for other colleges of nursing and other hospital systems,” she said. Other projects included identifying and developing treatments for COVID-19 skin wounds and developing monitoring systems to prevent patient falls. The initial one-year demonstration projects have ended, but eight new projects were recently approved, including from the UF Health Jacksonville campus, Starkweather said. For Owens, the project is just the beginning. All 120 samples from babies tested positive for at least one type of PFAS chemical. The chemicals do not degrade, and the heart defects are so severe that many of the babies will eventually require heart transplants. “The next step is to narrow the data. Find out if there are any correlations with parents’ job status, demographics. See if we can identify this as a true cause, and then we can start on preventative measures,” said Michael Maymi DNP, APRN, CPNP-AC, CCRN, CNE , clinical assistant professor, who was co-investigator with Owens on the project. Owens was thrilled to be heard. “It’s validating. I think that nursing has been tough, especially the last four years. People are leaving the bedside and leaving nursing. My experience has really reinvigorated my passion for environmental health and critical care nursing as a whole,” she said.

Written by Carlos Medina