Nursing in FoxboroughBWH Nurse - For and about the Nursing Staff of Brigham and Women's HospitalNursing in FoxboroughBWH Nurse - For and about the Nursing Staff of Brigham and Women's Hospital

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Nursing in Foxborough


When the Brigham & Women’s/Mass General Health Care Center at Patriot Place in Foxborough opens to patients in February, there will be approximately 18 clinical staff nurses ready to care for them.

The center, a four-story building with 93,000 square feet next to the entrance to Gillette Stadium, will offer safe and innovative customer-focused ambulatory services in a multidisciplinary setting.

“Over half of the nurses hired for Foxborough currently work at BWH, and it was obvious during the interview process how thrilled they are to have the opportunity to take the skills learned and developed here to a community setting,” said Lori Stevens, MBA, RN, director of Clinical Services. “I know that enthusiasm will carry over to ensure a great experience for our patients.”

All staff in the center will come together around patients’ needs, with a focus on customer service excellence and teamwork.

“Patients will receive the same standard of care there that they receive in our main hospital, but in a smaller, outpatient setting,” said Leanne Espindle, MSN, RN, nurse manager of the Day Surgery Unit at Foxborough, noting that all BWH policies will be in effect there. “Customer service is one of the top priorities at Foxborough, and we want to ensure patients have an ideal experience.”

The services offered at Foxborough are more routine than the highly specialized surgeries and treatments that typically bring critically ill patients into the hospital setting. “Patients have a lot of options for these types of services, so we want to provide them with the best experience possible,” Stevens said.

Teamwork is another priority for all staff. “Because we’re not in the hospital setting, we all need to be flexible and well-rounded in skills,” Stevens said. “At academic medical centers, staff can specialize, but in a community setting, everyone has to be prepared to do a little of everything at times.”

All the nurses at Foxborough have extensive experience in their area of specialty. The center will open with two nurses staffing the multidisciplinary clinic, which will offer a wide variety of medical and surgical specialties and an interventional physiatry/pain management procedure area. Primary Care will be hiring a nurse practitioner to help them kick off their Patient Centered Medical Home model of care. The largest number of nurses (14) will staff the Day Surgery Unit, which will open with two operating rooms and with plans to ramp up to four operating rooms as demand increases.

Teamwork is especially important in the Day Surgery Unit, where nurses must have experience in preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative nursing. “We will have a true perioperative model at Foxborough,” Espindle said. “We need to be able to multi-function because we’re not surrounded by a hospital and all the resources it provides.”

The health care center is conducting a first responder pilot program to certify all staff—clinical and nonclinical—in Basic Life Support (BLS) and Automatic External Defibrillation (AED). Clinical staff in Cardiac Diagnostics, Cardiac Rehab and Day Surgery also will be ACLS certified.

“This is part of the teamwork focus. We want anyone who encounters an emergency to act with confidence while concurrently initiating EMS,” Stevens said.

Nurses will have the resources they need to provide excellent care, including ample and up to date equipment. “Nurses can be confident they will have all the tools they need to provide care to their patients,” Espindle said.

The Center for Nursing Excellence is working closely with Stevens to bring education and orientation specific to nurses to the Foxborough site. Nurses will have access to HealthStream and videoconferencing capabilities so they can watch certain presentations and lectures, including the annual State of the Department of Nursing Address presented by Chief Nursing Officer Mairead Hickey, PhD, RN.

Simulations of patient cases will be conducted during January before the building opens. “No one is an expert on every single type of surgery, so the simulations will be conducted before we open to familiarize nurses with procedures and equipment. For example, if a nurse is not familiar with a specific orthopedic surgery, he or she will have exposure to the procedure which includes the opportunity to learn and practice with the equipment,” Stevens said.

The staff at the health care center will also complete emergency drills with a team from BWH Security and Emergency Preparedness. “We’ll participate in a large-scale drill with Foxborough Fire Department during the month of January on how to evacuate patients from the building and plan for other emergencies,” Stevens said.

Clinical Services offered at Foxborough:

  • Adult primary care
  • Rehabilitative Services, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, hand therapy, cardiac rehabilitation, wellness, injury and illness prevention, athletic training, personal training consultation services and performance analysis and enhancement
  • Medical specialties including cardiology, dermatology, reproductive gynecology, physiatry, pain management and rheumatology
  • Day surgery
  • Surgical specialties including orthopedics, general and gastrointestinal surgery, plastic surgery and urogynecology
  • Diagnostic imaging
  • Cardiac diagnostics
  • Laboratory
  • Pharmacy