Team Effort at Beverly Hospital Leads to Long-Awaited Baby-Friendly Designation

Anna McNicholas, RN, MSN, CCRN, Nurse Manager and Baby-Friendly Coordinator for Beverly Hospital in Beverly, Massachusetts, didn’t know what to expect when she received a call from Melissa Cho, BFUSA’s Accreditation Director.

“It was my day off, but I didn’t want to wait to hear,” says Anna. “I made her repeat it three times before I was convinced.”

The good news, of course, was that Beverly Hospital, which is part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, had achieved Baby-Friendly designation.

“I was just so happy and proud for the whole team,” Anna says. “We had banners printed that say, ‘Proud to be designated a Baby Friendly hospital,’ and the very next morning I was running around and hanging them up everywhere.”

A few weeks later, the team hosted a celebratory event, and they invited many former staff members, lactation consultants and community partners who had pushed the effort forward in its early days.

“I feel like the Beverly maternity and OB department is a very close-knit group,” says Anna. “Even after they retire or move on, people don’t usually go too far, and they keep in touch with everyone.”

“It really was a team effort,” says Kim Perryman, MMHC, RN, NE-BC, Chief Nursing Officer for Beth Israel Lahey’s north market.

At no time was teamwork more needed than when the group was getting ready for its site visit from BFUSA and Anna received the horrifying news that her husband, Chris, had been in a car accident. We’ll jump to the end of that story and tell you that Chris has fully recovered and returned to his normal life; but at the time, that outcome was not entirely clear.

“Our site visit was scheduled for a Tuesday and his accident was on the prior Friday night,” she recalls.

Anna knew where she needed to be. Thankfully, she had everything ready to go for the site visit and she had a great team behind her.

“Our Labor and Delivery Manager, Susan Caffrey, picked it up right where I was, and she led the team through our site visit while I was at the hospital with my husband,” she says.

Rebecca Gadon, RNC-MNN, MA, the hospital’s Associate Chief Nursing Officer for Maternal and Newborn Services, attributes this level of teamwork to a commitment from all levels of the organization.

“In my experience, if it doesn’t come from the grassroots, it’s really not going to be successful,” says Rebecca. “It’s the lactation consultants and the nurses at the bedside who are so dedicated and really want to make it happen. But it takes time to make sure everyone has the training so we’re practicing in an evidence-based fashion, and it takes time to build the culture around it for everybody on the team.”

Maintaining a cohesive team was especially challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many facilities, Beverly Hospital experienced significant turnover as a result of the crisis.

“Anna was the third person in the Baby-Friendly Coordinator role from the time we indicated our formal intent to pursue designation,” says Rebecca. “It shows that we’re all in it together.”

Kim and Rebecca both came to Beverly Hospital from a very different setting: Boston Medical Center (BMC), a large academic medical center in Boston, and one of the first facilities in the US to become Baby-Friendly. The contrast with BMC highlights the element that was most challenging in Beverly Hospital’s Baby-Friendly journey.

“Partnering with private physicians brings a different dynamic compared to working in an academic medical center,” says Kim.

The biggest hurdle was helping the community-based providers understand Baby-Friendly and fully commit to the evidence-based prenatal education required to achieve designation. Anna believes that challenge in particular made her a better leader.

“This was my first true leadership job,” Anna reflects. “I think it has truly helped me grow as a leader and helped me learn different ways to collaborate with people and present information ways that makes sense to them.”

“I’m happy for Anna, but also for the whole team,” says Kim. “The designation is validating for the patient and the family, but it’s also validating for the staff. Given all the workforce challenges we are facing, we look to have pockets of excellence throughout the organization. This is one of those things that provide excellence for the staff, the epitome of evidence-based practice. So, it’s like a two-fer – the right thing for the patient and the right thing for the staff.”

“It’s a final recognition of all the hard work that everybody’s done – and continues to do,” says Rebecca. “Because it’s not like a one-and-done. After you get the designation, you continue to work, not only to do the practice with the patients, but also to make sure we’re continuing to meet the standards and staying up with any developments.”

Reflecting back, Anna is just grateful for her team.

“I wanted this designation to be a celebration of the incredible care that our team gives every single day,” Anna says. “This was a very big win.”