AACN selects seven Pennsylvania hospitals to participate in nurse leadership training program

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) selects seven Pennsylvania hospitals as the newest participants in its hospital-based nurse leadership and innovation training program.

AACN Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy is designed to empower bedside nurses as clinician leaders and change agents whose initiatives measurably improve the quality of patient care with bottom-line impact to the hospital. As the only nursing excellence and leadership skill-building program that provides hospitals with both educational programming and grant funds to support project implementation, AACN CSI Academy represents a substantial investment by AACN in the future of nursing.

Participating hospitals in Pennsylvania:
•Abington Memorial Hospital, Abington
•Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia
•Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
•Lankenau Medical Center, Wynnewood
•Lehigh Valley Health Network, Allentown
•Penn Medicine-Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia
•Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Philadelphia

Healthcare leaders in greater Philadelphia said the program offers area hospitals the opportunity to achieve sustainable improvements in patient outcomes in their critical care areas.

These leaders include Rebecca Trotta, RN, PhD, director of nursing research at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. "We were attracted to AACN CSI Academy because it offers our nurses the ability to collaborate and work systematically toward improving nurse-sensitive patient outcomes," Trotta said. "Given the previous success of AACN CSI Academy in other cities, we look forward to having our nurses and nurse leaders participate in mentored workshops where they have the opportunity to learn quality improvement methodology from AACN experts and apply it directly to issues they face in practice."

Anne Jadwin, RN, MSN, AOCN, NE-BC, vice president of nursing and chief nursing officer at Fox Chase Cancer Center, says the program enables participants to directly influence the patient care experience by providing bedside nurses with mentored sequential professional development and experiential learning, resulting in expanded leadership competence and enhanced care for patients.

"AACN CSI Academy helps develop the next generation of nurse leaders," Jadwin said. "The program empowers frontline nurses to become change agents, taking ownership of a specific practice improvement and moving it successfully through the organizational process."

For the next 16 months, teams of up to four nurses from each Pennsylvania hospital will work with CSI faculty, an internal mentor and a chief nursing officer to identify issues related to existing patient care responsibilities. Teams will then develop and implement unit-based projects, resulting in quantifiable improvements in patient outcomes and decreases in hospital expenses. In most cases, it is anticipated the projects will be implemented in other units at each hospital.

Susan Lacey, RN, PhD, FAAN, director of the AACN CSI Academy program, will serve as lead faculty for the participating Pennsylvania hospitals.

"AACN CSI Academy offers tremendous potential benefits for nurses, patients and hospitals, from strengthening clinician confidence to preventing adverse events and shortening hospital stays," Lacey said. "The program is an important part of AACN's ongoing commitment to empowering direct care nurses and supporting their vital role in the transformation of healthcare."

The AACN CSI Academy teams in Pennsylvania join cohorts already in progress in Indiana, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Texas, for a combined total of 35 participating hospitals. Nurse participants in other regions are undertaking projects such as preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers, falls, delirium and unplanned extubation, and improving communication and teamwork between healthcare providers and patients' families.

In addition to benefiting participating hospitals, the program is designed to foster industry-wide nursing innovation through sharing of results and best practices via publications, presentations and online content.

AACN CSI Academy expands a successful pilot program developed by the Bi-State Nursing Innovation Center, Kansas City, Mo., with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Over the next three years, AACN will invest $1.25 million to fund national implementation of the program at partner hospitals across the country. This investment will support program administration and provide a $10,000 implementation grant to each participating hospital.