AACN to honor Seattle nurse with Flame of Excellence Award

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) will present the Flame of Excellence Award to Carol Jacobson, RN, MN, for her efforts to educate progressive care and critical care nurses in the care of patients with cardiac disease.

With more than 30 years of experience as a critical care nurse and nurse educator, Jacobson now leads Quality Education Services, a Seattle-based consultancy she founded in 1993 to offer nursing education programs across the country. She is known nationally for her humorous and commonsense approach to teaching difficult topics and making them understandable. She specializes in cardiac topics such as arrhythmias, 12-lead ECG interpretation, pacemakers, cardiovascular drugs and hemodynamic monitoring.

Jacobson will receive the award at the 2012 National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, Orlando, Fla., May 19-24. The Flame of Excellence Award honors sustained contributions to acute and critical care nursing at a high level and with broad reach.

During her clinical career, Jacobson held positions as coronary care/progressive care nurse manager, cardiology CNS, cardiac catheterization lab manager and CCU staff nurse. Since 1979, she has been a faculty member at the University of Washington School of Nursing, teaching graduate and undergraduate nursing students on cardiac arrhythmia and 12-lead ECG interpretation.

When Jacobson transitioned from focused clinical practice, she continued to educate progressive care and critical care nurses in the care of patients with cardiac disease using several channels, including face-to-face teaching and publications. In addition to her own firm, Jacobson is a partner in Cardiovascular Nursing Education Associates, which provides an array of cardiac nursing education programs and review courses across the country along with self-published resources, including a comprehensive clinical manual for cardiovascular nursing practice.

Jacobson was instrumental in establishing the Seattle Area Critical Care Education Consortium in 1986, a bold move that brought together educators and administrators from 12 hospitals in the region to standardize education content and provide critical care courses and residency programs. The consortium served as a model for many similar programs throughout the country and continues today, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary of enhancing the knowledge of high acuity and critical care nurses, improving outcomes and promoting professional practice.

She has been a frequent and popular speaker at NTI and other national conferences. She served on the editorial board and as the ECG department editor for AACN Advanced Critical Care, AACN's advanced practice journal, and has contributed numerous book chapters and journal articles.