Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Nurse-Led Initiatives Benefit Patients and Finances at North Carolina Hospitals

Nurse-led initiatives at several North Carolina hospitals significantly improved patient outcomes and could result in savings of more than $2.5 million, according to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), which funded the program.

The 16-month hospital-based nurse leadership and innovation training program, known as the AACN Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy, seeks to empower bedside nurses as clinician leaders and agents of change. The nurses’ initiatives must seek to generate quantifiable improvements in quality of care and hospital finances. The North Carolina cohort is the most recently completed project. An Indianapolis academy was completed last year and work continues at hospitals in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas

Four of the North Carolina Academy’s teams focused on early progressive mobility, which can help reduce ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), pressure ulcers, and deep-vein thrombosis. Among the outcomes, early progressive mobility: 

• Decreased intensive care unit length of stay by more than one day;
• Reduced mechanical ventilation days up to 35 percent;
• Reduced VAP up to 60 percent;
• Decreased pressure ulcers up to 20 percent; and
• Reduced readmission rates.

The AACN CSI Academy Innovation Database includes a compilation of CSI team results and documentation.

The program is part of AACN’s response to the Institute of Medicine’s landmark The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health  report, which explored the vital role that nurses can and should play in transforming health care.

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