NICHE^™: Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders

This book is a gift back to all the staff nurses, nurse leaders, nurse educators, and system leaders who have helped us think deeply about what it means to provide excellent care to older adults. Its goal is to tell the story of how Nurses Improving Care to the Hospitalized elderly evolved into the national and international program it is today and what some of the essential elements are to ensure program success. The book consists of twenty chapters. The book provides the historical underpinnings of the program and the nurse leaders who helped conceptualize and shape the program. It describes the approach to Nurses Improving Care for Healthcare System Elders (NICHE) and how the geriatric institutional assessment profile along with a readiness assessment for the geriatric resource nurses and assurance of leader ship support are crucial to have in place at the outset of the program. Careful assessment, person-centered care, planning, and reliable follow-through with the geriatric syndromes most likely to create difficulties for older people are at the heart of the program. The book relates to the business proposition for NICHE and how external regulations and consumers are central to refinement of the program on an ongoing basis. The international context is exceptionally important as one’s world becomes more and more integrated in one practice approaches and concepts. As global demography shifts toward older adults, every older person in their family should expect and demand age-friendly healthcare. NICHE is the backbone of an age-friendly health system and the very special vignettes provided by nurses who have traveled the geriatric resource nurse journey are inspiring.