AACN to recognize Elizabeth Bridges with Flame of Excellence Award

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) will present the Flame of Excellence Award to Elizabeth Bridges, RN, PhD, CCNS, FCCM, FAAN — colonel, U.S. Air Force Reserves, associate professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing (UW) and a clinical nurse researcher at the University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle.

Bridges will receive the award at the 2011 National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, Chicago, April 30-May 5. The Flame of Excellence Award honors sustained contributions to acute and critical care nursing at a high level and with broad reach.

Currently serving with the Clinical Investigations Facility, 60th Medical Group, Travis Air Force Base, Calif., Bridges has served as an Air Force critical care nurse researcher for almost 22 years. Beginning in 1998, she led a collaborative team of Air Force nurse researchers to study casualty care under unique and austere conditions including battlefield, aeromedical evacuation and disaster response. The largest operational nursing research program in the Department of Defense, it improved hypothermia and pressure ulcer prevention; care of patients who require in-flight mechanical ventilation or invasive hemodynamic monitoring; and state-of-the-art monitoring to guide resuscitation of critically injured patients.

Funded by the TriService Nursing Research Program, her work led to the first comprehensive database of patient characteristics and care requirements for critically ill and injured patients transported by USAF Critical Care Air Transport Teams.

An instructor and course director with the Defense Institute for Medical Operations, Bridges taught regional disaster response and trauma system management to medical professionals in some of the world's most war-torn regions. She teaches critical care nursing and guest lectures about hospital disaster response and clinical research/evidence-based practice by bedside nurses at UW where she helps to design, implement and analyze nursing research projects and translate existing healthcare research into clinical practice.

Editor of Battlefield and Disaster Nursing Pocket Guide, Bridges serves on the editorial board of the American Journal Critical Care and was co-editor of "Cardiac Nursing," 6th edition. A consultant for military nurse researchers and clinicians, this fellow of the College of Critical Care Medicine and American Academy of Nursing received the 2008 March of Dimes Nurse of the Year award for research.

SOURCE American Association of Critical-Care Nurses