Is This the Nursing Model of the Future?

Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill., has introduced a new nursing care model called the Magis Patient & Family model. The administration claims that the model takes a unique approach in caring for patients and their families.

According to the article, New Nursing Care Model Puts Patients, Family in Center of Care, nurses are to be spending more time at the bedside, providing one-on-one care, as nursing should be done. They also have in the model that nurses will make rounds every hour to assess pain and to see if the patients need positioning or toileting, they will be expected to ask “probing questions to determine levels of pain and other symptoms,” they will ask the patients each day what their goals are, and finally, the nurses and physicians will “be expected to follow the four Ps,” which are to pause, ponder, plan, and pray.

I’ve been around nursing long enough to go through different models of care. We did the team nursing, we did the primary nursing — we went back to the team nursing. Then we did different forms of the team nursing; if the hospital I worked at was still open, I’m sure they’d still be trying to find the right approach.

But is there a right approach? Nurses should be doing hourly rounds without having to be told to. Nurses should be probing to find out if patients have pain that can’t be seen on the surface. Nurses should be spending more time with the patients. But — what all these models are forgetting is one very important thing. Where are the nurses who are going to do all this?

It’s fine to have an institution like Loyola Medical Center to build and furnish a new tower with private rooms and nursing hubs instead of nursing stations. But if there aren’t enough nurses to do the caring, it’s just not going to work.