Meredith Gipps, MSN ’14, had planned to seek out an adventure when she finished her BSN. She took a job at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City, MI, to experience the best northern Michigan had to offer before heading back down state. Instead, Gipps found a community she could belong in. Her intended short-term adventure turned into a lifelong passion up north.
Gipps graduated from Grand Valley State University 2009 with her BSN. She accepted the role at Munson soon afterwards in one of the hospital’s med-surg units. Her professional skills and career trajectory grew significantly during her time there.
“I worked as a bedside nurse on one of our med-surg units for many years. In that same unit, I worked as a patient care coordinator, which is a heightened charge nurse role,” said Gipps.
Taking on a patient care coordinator role encouraged Gipps to pursue clinical nurse specialist education. Enrolling in the Michigan State University College of Nursing allowed her to complete her studies remotely rather than making the three-hour drive from Traverse City to East Lansing every week.
“I was able to go to school while I lived and worked in my community… many years before the pandemic and before remote became more of a standard and regular approach to education,” said Gipps. This distance between her and the on-campus community didn’t hinder her connection to MSU, rather it strengthened it.
Gipps completed her Master of Nursing degree from MSU in 2014. Upon completing her degree, an opportunity opened at Munson to enter a nurse manager role, leading to a permanent clinical nurse specialist position. She now leads patient care and nursing teams through quality improvement projects at the medical center, one of which is fall prevention for patients in the hospital.
Gipps and team members at Munson implemented major changes in care for fall risk patients. As Grand Traverse County, where Munson Medical Center is located, has a large elderly population, it was imperative for medical teams to protect the physical health of the aging community when faced with a stay in the hospital.
“As the CNS on that project, I did a very extensive literature review, a lot of best practice research, and collaboration with CNS colleagues at other institutions,” said Gipps. “We matched all of those considerations to what would work best for our patient population and our nursing departments here within Munson.”
The fall prevention program aimed to address a problem that has been a “significant challenge” in hospital settings. Research on fall prevention spans across decades in the United States, according to Gipps.
Thanks to the work her team performed, Gipps and Munson have seen a steady decline in patient falls since the project was implemented system-wide two years ago. Since July 2023, Munson has seen a 22% decrease in all patient falls. More importantly, the number of falls with injury has decreased, falling by 13% in that same time span.
“We’re really preventing harm within the hospital setting by aligning with these best practices and each other as a nursing team,” said Gipps.
Munson Medical Center lives in the heart of one of northern Michigan’s largest cities. The Traverse City area is full of excitement and natural beauty being surrounded by the Great Lakes and Grand Traverse Bay. However, being in the largest city for several hundred miles means the hospital must service a massive expanse of communities and patients. As Munson Healthcare maintains clinics and medical centers across the state of Michigan, their care must stretch to the farthest reaches of the mitten state.
“Munson Medical Center’s service area covers the land size of Vermont and Delaware combined,” said Gipps. “With that brings unique challenges to our patients, who may have to travel outside of their hometowns to receive care.”
Out of Michigan’s 56,591 square miles of land, Munson services just over 11,000 square miles. Gipps and Munson Healthcare make it a priority to bring comfort to patients that come to the hospital as creating a sense of security impacts patient outcomes.
“Having such a large service area, our patients really feel that distance at times when they do need to come here to the medical center for specialty care,” said Gipps. “It can cause our patients to delay care if they feel that, geographically, healthcare is unattainable to them.”
As mentioned, the county that Munson Medical Center resides in has a large population of people 65 years of age and older compared to other Michigan counties. Access to specialty care in rural areas can often be a challenge for patients. Munson has made it a system-wide goal to make specialty care as accessible as possible in all Michigan communities, especially those in northern Michigan.
“We are well-positioned here within Traverse City and amongst the medical center to provide our specialty services, such as our comprehensive stroke center, specialty cardiovascular care, and our oncology services,” said Gipps. “We do that as close to home as possible throughout our communities.”
In an area where creative problem solving is essential to providing rural communities with comprehensive care, Gipps felt fully prepared to “think boldly” thanks to her studies at MSU.
“Our [clinical nurse specialist] program challenged us to think boldly, to be innovators, to look at problems that we may or may not even acknowledge to exist, and to question things that we did or have always done,” said Gipps.