AACN expands its hospital-based nurse leadership and innovation training program

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) expands its hospital-based nurse leadership and innovation training program to a fourth region with the addition of eight Austin-area hospitals.

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 central Texas:
•Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, Austin
•Seton Medical Center Austin, Austin
•Seton Medical Center Hays, Kyle
•Seton Medical Center Williamson, Round Rock
•Seton Northwest Hospital, Austin
•St. David's North Austin Medical Center, Austin
•St. David's Medical Center, Austin
•University Medical Center Brackenridge, Austin

Healthcare leaders in the Austin area are eager to introduce the program to local nurses and anticipate the benefits will be substantial.

These leaders include Joyce Batcheller, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, senior vice president and system chief nursing officer of the Seton Family of Hospitals."The AACN CSI Academy complements Seton's efforts to create an environment where the collective inherent talent of frontline nurses is unleashed to improve patient outcomes and achieve excellence in care," she said."The program offers a tremendous opportunity to further engage our nurses and demonstrate the impact nurses have on patient care."

The chief nursing officer for St. David's Medical Center, Susan Griffin, RN, MSN, CENP, appreciates how AACN CSI Academy empowers staff leaders to discover and promote best practices. "These types of opportunities hopefully increase staff commitment to not only patients, but to the organization and the career and calling of nursing," she said. "Meaningful change must come from within, and leaders must create the culture that allows it."

For the next 16 months, teams of four nurses from each Austin-area hospital will work with CSI faculty, an internal mentor and their chief nursing officer to identify issues related to their 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 later be implemented in other units at each hospital.

Beth Martin, RN, MSN, CCNS, ACNP-BC, ACHPN, will serve as lead faculty for the nurses participating in Austin's AACN CSI Academy program. She is senior director for medical services at Hospice and Palliative Care Charlotte Region in Charlotte, N.C., and served as the 2008-09 chair of the AACN Certification Corporation board of directors.

"This program underscores AACN's commitment to bedside nurses as they provide 'safe passage' for patients in complex healthcare systems," Martin said. "Nurses already have extensive clinical knowledge, and AACN CSI Academy helps them develop additional skills, which empowers them to take their leadership to the next level and demonstrate the significant impact the staff nurse has on patient care and the bottom line."

The AACN CSI Academy teams in Texas join cohorts already in progress in Indiana, North Carolina and Massachusetts, for a combined total of 28 participating hospitals. Nurse participants in other regions are undertaking such projects 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.