AACN to honor Detroit nurse with Flame of Excellence Award

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) will present the Flame of Excellence Award to Margaret L. "Meg" Campbell, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, a nationally known expert in hospital-based palliative care and end-of-life issues.

Campbell has nearly 40 years of nursing experience, with 28 years of clinical and administrative work in hospice and palliative care nursing. She currently serves as director of nursing research, Palliative Care and Advanced Practice Nursing at Detroit Receiving Hospital, where she has managed palliative care practice since 1988. She is also on the faculty at Wayne State University College of Nursing.

Campbell 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.

As a clinical nurse specialist and nurse practitioner in charge of the Comprehensive Support Care Team at Detroit Receiving Hospital in the late 1980s, she led efforts to establish an innovative, nurse-led palliative care consultation service that provided a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to end-of-life care that became a model for others.

She was one of the earliest clinicians to measure and disseminate positive financial outcomes from palliative care consultation, and she published some of the earliest work about palliative care in the ICU. A frequent contributor to the critical care periodical literature, including the American Journal of Critical Care, in 1998 she authored a book titled "Forgoing Life-Sustaining Therapy: How to Care for the Patient Who Is Near Death."

Campbell has served on a number of influential committees and task forces to improve care of the dying, including the Institute of Medicine, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, American Hospital Association, American College of Chest Physicians Guidelines Panel, National Quality Forum and National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care.

She has held leadership positions in the Southeast Michigan Chapter of AACN, Michigan Nurses Association, Medical Ethics Resource Network of Michigan and Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. She has excelled in these efforts by collaborating across disciplines and bringing together nurses, physicians and social workers to improve palliative care in the critical care setting.