Indiana Program Illustrates Potential of Nurse-Led Initiatives

A series of nurse-led initiatives in Indiana improved patient outcomes and is projected to save health care organizations in the state more than $5.2 million. These results demonstrate the importance of increasing nurses’ leadership opportunities, a key recommendation of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) landmark “Future of Nursing” report.

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) launched the Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy last year as a team-oriented and hands-on educational experience that placed nurses as clinician leaders. The nurses led initiatives and generated quantifiable improvements in the quality of patient care and hospital finances. Nurse-led initiatives studied in the program helped to:

• Improve patient satisfaction by as much as 20 percent;
• Reduce stays in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) by 0.5 days;
• Cut incidences of patient falls and hospital-acquired device-related nose and mouth pressure ulcers by more than 50 percent;
• Decrease overall pressure ulcers by more than 60 percent; and
• Drop mechanical ventilation days for ICU patients by 0.44 days.

Forty-two hospitals spanning six U.S. regions are participating in the preliminary national program rollout. The program continues to run at hospitals in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Ongoing projects include preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers, falls, extubation, and improving communication and teamwork.

Media coverage of the AACN findings included Infection Control Today, Nurse.com and Advanced Healthcare Network for Nurses.

INQRI-funded research has focused on nurse-led initiatives in many of these areas,  including patient falls, central line-associated bloodstream infections and pressure ulcers.

American Association of Critical Care Nurses to Host Webinar on Assessing and Managing Delirium - Sept. 19

The next presentation in the American Association of Critical Care Nurses' (AACN) Critical Care Webinar Series will focus on delirium in acute and critical care settings.

The webinar, Delirium Challenge: Assessing and Managing in Acute/Critical Care, will be held at 10am Pacific Daylight Time on Thursday, September 19.  The presenter is Leanne Boehm, RN, MSN, ACNS-BC. She is a research nurse in Vanderbilt University's Intensive Care Unit Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group. And was part of an  INQRI-funded research project addressing the problem of critically ill patients on ventilators developing led by Michele Balas and William Burke. The team tested a bundle of practices aimed at reducing delirium among patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The study revealed that a nurse-led interprofessional team employing the bundle could help patients int eh ICU avoid delirium and weakness so that they healed sooner and were healthier after leaving the hospital.

 Registration for the webinar is free.  To register, click here.

Upcoming AACN Webinar on Managing Delirium

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is continuing its webinar series devoted to understanding and implementing updated clinical practice guidelines for pain, agitation and delirium with a session on Thursday, September 19, 10 a.m. PDT, presented by Leanne Boehm, RN, MSN, ACNS-BC.

Registration is now open for the webinar, "Delirium Challenge: Assessing and Managing in Acute/Critical Care."

This work mirrors that of INQRI grantees Michele Balas and William Burke who conducted a project which focuses on preventing complications in mechanically ventilated patients through use of the "Awakening and Breathing Coordination, Delirium assessment and management and Early Exercise and progressive mobility (ABCDE)" bundle.  Balas and Burke led a team to implement, analyze and disseminate an evidence-based, nurse-led, inter-professional, multi-component program focused on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill adults.  In fact, their "Implementing the ABCDE Bundle at the Bedside" was selected as the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses' first PEARL (Practice, Evidence, Application, Resources and Leadership) web-based tool.

Click here to learn more about the Balas-Burke project "Implementation and Dissemination of an Interdisciplinary Nurse-Led Plan to Manage Delirium in Critically Ill Adults."

AACN Webinar on Managing Alarm Fatigue

On Thursday, June 20 at 10am, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) will present a free webinar: "Managing Alarm Fatigue: New Approaches and Best Practices."

The patient safety organization, ECRI Institute, has identified alarm hazards as its Top Health Technology Hazard for 2013 and The Joint Commission issued an April 2013 Sentinel Event Alert on alarm fatigue. AACN’s free, live webinar will discuss the scope of this growing problem, management of environmental alarms for improved patient safety and strategies for creating a more effective (and quieter) workplace.

Panel presenters:
• Marjorie Funk, RN, MSN, PhD, FAAN, FAHA
• Maria Cvach, RN, MSN, CCRN
• Sue Sendelbach, RN, PhD, CCNS, FAHA

Register here.

Implementation Research Program Focuses on Hospital Staff Nurses

Leadership development is important at all levels of nursing, especially when it can contribute directly to improved patient care. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) Clinical Scene Investigator Academy (CSI) gives critical care nurses the opportunity to learn leadership skills and become change agents by developing, managing, and sharing quality improvement initiatives in their hospitals.

NurseZone.com reports that seven Pennsylvania hospitals were recently selected to participate in this important initiative that is an expansion of a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: the Bi-State Nursing Innovation Center in Kansas City, Mo. 

The seven Pennsylvania hospitals will each receive a $10,000 grant from AACN. They are: Abington Memorial Hospital; Fox Chase Cancer Center; Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Lankenau Medical Center; Lehigh Valley Health Network; Penn Medicine-Pennsylvania Hospital; and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

The AACN CSI Academy also has projects in Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Texas. Over the next three years, AACN will invest $1.25 million to fund implementation of the program.

AACN: Implementing Successful Academic-Practice Partnerships Conference

AACN: Implementing Successful Academic-Practice Partnerships Conference
April 18-19, 2013. Chicago, IL

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing is promoting a conference to discover keys to maximizing strategic affiliations to ensure that they are goal-driven, outcomefocused, and mutually beneficial. Participants will explore how to sustain commitment and cooperation among partnering organizations through interactive presentations highlighting successful collaborations. Of note, the conference is geared toward those partnerships that are new/or under development.

Register by March 22.

Webinar: Implementation of a Nurse-Led Plan to Manage Delirium

Please join us for the next webinar in our series focused on implementation and dissemination of evidence-based practices. INQRI project investigators Michele Balas and William Burke will present their project, "Implementation and Dissemination of an Interdisciplinary Nurse-Led Plan to Manage Delirium in Critically Ill Adults" on February 28, 2013 from 3:00pm-4:00pmET.

Fully two-thirds of intensive care unit patients develop delirium, which is associated with longer stays, billions of dollars in costs globally, and three-fold excess mortality at six months. Over one-half of intensive care unit survivors suffer a functionally debilitating dementia-like illness, which appears related to delirium duration. The main goal of this project was to implement, analyze and disseminate an evidence-based, nurse-led, inter-professional, multi-component program focused on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill adults. The study focused on applying a program of delirium screening, prevention and treatment developed at Vanderbilt University, and was selected as the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses' first PEARL (Practice, Evidence, Application, Resources and Leadership) web-based tool.

Please join us to learn more.

February 28, 2013
3:00pm-4:00pmET
REGISTER for this webinar. 

This session is part of a series featuring all of INQRI's grantee teams focused on translating research into practice. Save the Dates for these upcoming sessions: 

• Implementation of a Risk Specific Fall Prevention Bundle to Reduce Falls in Hospitals - 3/12/13 at 4pm ET - Register. 
• Translation of a Transitional Care Nursing Intervention for People with Serious Mental Illness - 3/27/13 at 12pm ET - Register. 

Click here to view the first session in this series, "Nurse-Led Intervention to Improve Screening and Treatment for Substance Abuse." 

Click here to view the second session in this series, "Dissemination and Implementation of Evidence-Based Methods to Measure and Improve Pain Outcomes." 

Click here to view the third session in this series, "Creation of a Nurse Manager Development Program to Increase Patient Safety."

INQRI Project Announced as First AACN PEARL

Congratulations to the INQRI researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center whose project on implementing the ABCDE bundle at the bedside was selected as the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses' first PEARL (Practice, Evidence, Application, Resources and Leadership) web-based tool.

This project focuses on preventing complications in mechanically ventilated patients through use of the "Awakening and Breathing Coordination, Delirium assessment and management and Early Exercise and progressive mobility (ABCDE)" bundle.

For more information on the PEARL program, please click here.

For more information on the INQRI project, please click here.

Educating The Nursing Workforce

We are pleased to share with all of you two initiatives seeking to bolster nurses' education and training so that they may continue to provide evidence-based, high-value care.

Earlier this morning, Wolters Kluwer Health announced that they would be expanding Lippincott's Professional Development Programs for hospitals and other health care facilities. These bolstered educational tools are designed to optimize nursing performance, increase clinical knowledge, ensure staff competence, and improve patient outcomes.

Click here to read more about WKH's Professional Development Programs.

Similarly, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has announced the extension of their Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QESN) initiative, thanks to additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The QESN provides educational resources and training to enhance the ability of faculty in master's and doctoral nursing programs to teach quality and safety competencies.

Click here to read more about the AACN's extension of the QESN initiative.