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A Cheesehead and a mission: Personal connections drive orthogeriatric nursing care

Posted Dec 16th, 2024

We are Niagara Health is a series of stories that celebrates the incredible people working and volunteering in our organization and how they make a difference in the lives of patients and coworkers every day.

Nurse Practitioner Christina Huntington in a physiotherapy room

Nurse Practitioner Christina Huntington uses a team approach to helping patients referred to the orthogeriatric program at Niagara Health. She's seen here in a physiotherapy room at the Niagara Falls Hospital. 

You likely won’t find any medical textbooks citing the therapeutic benefits of wearing a hat shaped like a wedge of cheese, but Nurse Practitioner Christina Huntington could school you on them.

As the sole nurse practitioner in Niagara Health’s orthogeriatric consultation service – and a loyal Green Bay Packers fan – Huntington has been known to use the emblem worn by the NFL team’s most steadfast devotees in her own practice caring for older adults, particularly those recovering from surgery after a hip fracture or other fragility fractures.

Take the patient experiencing delirium when he came into Huntington’s care.

“I walked into his room and he asked, ‘Are you the coach?’ I said, ‘Yes, and I’m going to bring in my team and we’re going to help you,’” Huntington recalls.

That exchange – or meeting the patient where they are, as Huntington describes – led to her learning the patient was a former high school football coach with a mutual affinity for the Packers. With that information in hand, Huntington continued building a connection to aid in his treatment by bringing in her Cheesehead hat for him to wear while his wife took pictures.

“He was ecstatic wearing this hat,” Huntington says. “Meeting the patient where they’re at and giving them the joy in that moment, that’s important. He didn’t have a long time with us but the time he did have with us, we made it person-centred. I feel privileged to be part of that.”

Launched earlier this year the orthogeriatric consultation service aligns with Niagara Health’s Strategic Plan and the senior-friendly care entrenched within it. This nurse practitioner-led service focuses on providing specialized, comprehensive geriatric assessment and treatment for patients 80 and older who’ve experienced hip fractures requiring surgery.

"Folks lying in a hospital bed get deconditioned, they can get pressure injuries or pneumonia, and we want to avoid that.”                 

A battle against time

Huntington works with orthopedic surgeons, general internists and interprofessional health team members, including physiotherapists and occupational therapists, to prioritize on bone health, prevent hospital-acquired delirium and reduce the risk of falls. Together, their goal is to get patients mobile and back to their normal lives quickly and safely.

“When we think about folks in the hospital, they’re usually people who are really sick, but a lot of people we’re seeing are quite well,” Huntington says. “So when we see them, it’s a race to get them to see the team so we avoid the deconditioning that can happen with long hospital stays. Folks lying in a hospital bed get deconditioned, they can get pressure injuries or pneumonia, and we want to avoid that.”                 

Huntington’s role is unique at Niagara Health. While partner hospital St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton has an orthogeriatric team, a dedicated orthogeriatric nurse practitioner is rare.

When a patient is referred to her, Huntington researches their situation in depth, studying their history and getting to know the person behind the chart, much like she did with that fellow Green Bay Packers fan. She works hands-on with physiotherapists and occupational therapists to help patients build strength and confidence to return to health.

It’s a natural extension of her previous role with the Geriatric Assessment Program (GAP), which has both inpatient and outpatient services that connect older adult patients with specialized care teams, including geriatricians.

That Cheesehead experience wasn’t a revelation for Huntington, who started as a registered nurse with GAP in 2010. It only reinforced the care philosophy that has guided her career.

'It's the personhood for me'

As the daughter of a nurse, Huntington never had much desire to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Then a conflict in her university class schedule ultimately led her to reconsider.

Huntington was studying psychology at McMaster University when a friend suggested enrolling in a gerontology class to alleviate the scheduling issue. As an extra selling point, the two could share the textbook.

Huntington recalls the professor would often show photos or video of active older adults defying ageist stereotypes of frailty by swimming or power lifting. She was so taken by what she saw and learned that she changed her major to gerontology, eager to delve into the social science that studies the aging process more deeply.

Still, she wondered what she would do with her degree after university. That’s when she gave nursing more consideration, eventually studying at D’Youville University in Buffalo with the specific goal of working with older adults.

“When the opportunity presented itself, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do,’” Huntington recalls. “It’s learning about the person. In my orthogeriatric role, it’s ‘You’re here, you broke your hip, what happened?’”

The answers she gets might surprise some, but not Huntington. Many reflect the active older adults she saw in gerontology class, like the patients who were biking five kilometres or getting their usual 10,000 steps in before 9 a.m. when they got injured. They’re stories that emerge because Huntington prioritizes getting to know the patient first.

“That’s the best part of the job – learning about the patient. Getting them better and back home is secondary for me. It’s the personhood for me,” she says. “Getting to know the person is the easiest way to get my job done.”

Having a Cheesehead within reach helps, too.

“Did I do my best with him and his family as an orthogeriatric nurse practitioner,” Huntington asks. “I look at it as a privilege – how a patient enhanced my nursing career and having that time interacting with them. Whether it’s a few hours or years, it’s a privilege to be with them.”

Niagara Health System