This book offers leadership lessons for aspiring nurse leaders from luminaries in business, medicine, philanthropy, government, academia, research, and health care. It offers practical advice, lessons learned, and testimonials as to how nurses can prepare themselves for leadership, which in turn, will help them to provide exceptional patient care. As per the report of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the heightened roles of the professional nurse allow nurses of all practices to more fully develop their leadership skills. Nurse leaders are moving the interprofessional collaboration agenda forward by serving in key leadership positions. A nurse leader who led public research in the Kent State University and Bowling Green State University challenged the common perception that successful leaders are born, complete with the requisite temperament and talents. Nurses who play leadership roles can fill in research on health care policy formulation and implementation that will change the course of health care payment, delivery, and quality. The book discusses nurse research leadership from an economist’s perspective, hiring leaders to understand leadership, and nursing leadership lessons from an association executive’s perspective, from a physician’s chief executive officer’s perspective, from a nursing friend’s perspective and from a collaborative team’s perspective. The book also highlights nursing leadership’s contributions to safety and quality, how leadership can usher in health reforms and achieve better health for all people, and advancing the cause of transformational nurse leadership.

Growing numbers of nurses are working in long-term care and playing a major role in the provision of long-term care services. This book provides an overview of the unique aspects of long-term care with a specific focus on nurses working in nursing home and assisted living settings. It offers a review of the unique aspects and settings for long-term care, special needs of the population served, and clinical challenges. The book is divided into five parts. The first part provides the basics of long-term care with chapters covering nursing responsibilities, regulations, and cultural change. The nursing process is discussed in Part II, which focuses on the minimum data set (MDS), assessment needs beyond the MDS, assessment skills, creative care plans, person-centered care and family care. The challenges involved in clinical settings such as promotion of medication safety, and reduction of medication errors and common risks are dealt with in the third section. As a significant number of individuals who need long-term care services have cognitive impairment, Section IV is devoted to the care of residents with dementias. Management skills, legal risks, and issues pertaining to surveys are presented in Section V. In recognition of the stresses that can arise in long-term care nursing, a chapter is dedicated to the important topic of self-care.

This book is a response that fosters education, practice development, and professionalism. The bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) is the essential educational foundation to give nurses the knowledge to improve health outcomes and provide the highest quality care. It provides the essentials of nursing theory and the importance of having a philosophy of nursing that informs our professional role. The book is written to assist with the transition from the role of the LPN to the baccalaureate-prepared registered nurse (RN). Licensed practical nurses (LPNs) who enter a university to advance their education through seeking a baccalaureate of nursing degree often find the experience of socializing into the new professional role challenging. The book analyzes the change process, discusses Benner’s stages of clinical competence, examines the philosophy of nursing and describes stress reduction measures. The terms leadership and management are described, and the role of the baccalaureate-prepared nurse as leader and manager is explored. Finally the book talks about the Skill Competencies required for the Baccalaureate-Prepared Nurse-electronic health records (EHRs); the Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) Movement; Simulated E-Health Delivery System (SEEDS) and Nursing Informatics Education Model (NIEM). The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) program was created in 2005 by an expert panel of nursing educators with the aim of preparing future nurses to continuously advance the quality and safety of the health care system in which they practice. The group developed six core competencies to be incorporated into nursing curricula: client-centered care; teamwork and collaboration; evidence-based practice; quality improvement; safety; and informatics.

This book is designed to help nurses and other health professionals develop compelling proposals for PhD dissertations; National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants, fellowships, and career development awards; and proposals for education, translation, evidence-based practice, and demonstration projects, including those for the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) capstone project. It takes readers through all the parts of developing a proposal, selecting a problem; showing the significance of the problem; describing the work already done on the problem and the need for further work on the problem or its solution; describing their preliminary work, when relevant; and detailing their design and methods. Then, the book offers innovative ideas for writing a dissertation proposal or a proposal for a DNP project or other type of evidence-based practice project. In describing proposals for NIH funding, the book gives detailed instructions on what content to include and how to organize the Specific Aims section and provides similar details on writing the Significance, Innovation, and Approach sections. Finally, it offers guidance in composing a title and abstract, preparing the additional materials needed for a proposal, and developing a budget. It also addresses the processes of writing proposals, submitting a grant proposal, the review, and a possible resubmission.

This book is a response to the need for nursing students to have resources about core Evidence-based practice (EBP) knowledge and competencies for each level of nursing practice degrees. It addresses critical essentials that nursing students must master as they move from one nursing degree level to the next. The book takes an inclusive view of EBP from the perspectives of direct care nurses, advanced registered nurse practitioners, healthcare systems leaders, researchers, and faculty. It aligns EBP content with specific Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Master of Science in Nursing (MSN), and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) essentials outlined by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and addresses leveling EBP process and content across curricula. The book is organized into four major parts containing 20 chapters. Part I: Conceptual Foundations of Evidence-Based Practice contains five chapters and provides readers with necessary foundational knowledge on which to build clinical decision-making skills based on the best available evidence. Part II: Designing And Implementing Evidence-Based Practice Projects contains six chapters that systematically explore the critical elements of conceptualizing, developing, implementing, and evaluating EBP projects. PART III: Science-Based Decisions and Evidence-Based Practice contains three chapters that emphasize the importance of translational research and quality improvement for the implementation and evaluation of EBP. The final part, Evidence-Based Practice: Empowering Nurses contains six chapters that address the importance of an EBP culture and structural empowerment strategies required to achieve and sustain a culture that fosters EBP.

This book describes innovative, nurse-managed solutions for improving health care today. It addresses the key business, policy, medical, financial, and operational considerations necessary for successfully opening and operating nurse-led health facilities. With the mission to dramatically expand access to primary and preventive health care, these clinics provide a full range of services including primary care, health promotion, disease prevention, and behavioral health care to residents of underserved communities throughout the United States. The book provides a historical perspective on nurse-managed health centers (NMHCs), includes chapters on the practical aspects of starting and operating NMHCs, combined with case studies that illustrate the challenges, lessons learned, and successes of NMHCs, and deals with an assessment of the current status of NMHCs and a vision for their future. The book delivers a wealth of comprehensive information for nurses who are considering opening their own clinics. Reinforced with best-practice models and case studies, it discusses what it takes to successfully start and run a nurse-managed health center. The book addresses the history and growth of nurse-led clinics and describes the nurse-led paradigm of care. It identifies the different types of nurse-led clinics (primary care, school based, wellness, and more) and the clinical services offered within them. Also discussed are the requirements and mind-set of potential consumers and strategies for sustainability along with the role of the collaborative team. The pros and cons of a variety of business and operations models are examined along with quality metrics and initiatives. The book also covers various state and federal policy challenges and opportunities and explores the future of nurse-led care in view of ongoing health care reform.

The practice of nursing is both art and science. It requires a broad range of skills and capabilities. This book takes complex topics and legal theories, explains them in no-nonsense, understandable language, and makes them relevant to the current world in which nurses practice their profession. The book is organized into twelve chapters. Each chapter begins with a statement of objectives, which will make the reading of the chapter most meaningful. The first chapter presents an overview of law relevant to nurses’ interests, including basic legal principles that underlie and form the framework for the practice of nursing. The second chapter describes the challenges facing advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) in a rapidly changing health care delivery system. It focuses on the practice areas of the APRN and the pivotal roles they play in the delivery of health care. The third chapter is about nursing malpractice and negligence. Chapter four presents the fundamentals and principles of documentation and systems of documentation, including electronic systems, and contains numerous legal cases. The fifth chapter covers patient rights with regard to care, decision making, and privacy issues. Chapter six talks about risk management and continuing quality improvement. Chapter seven outlines the major laws governing disaster and emergency events. Chapter eight covers the law of corporations and provides information on the types of business structures that can be used for health care business and facility operations. Chapter nine addresses the developing area of corporate compliance and the nurse’s role in regard to it. The tenth chapter provides comprehensive information on employment and employment-related law. Chapter eleven focuses on both civil and criminal trials. The final chapter discusses alternate methods of dispute resolution: arbitration, mediation, and negotiation.

This book provides the big picture when caring for cardiac surgery patients. Most of the time, nurses care for patients during one small part of the patient experience. It is important to understand what happens before and after that short period of time that nurses care for these patients. It helps the nurses to prepare the patients and their families for what is coming and provides the best teaching. The book also allows nurses to understand this journey back to health that their patients take. While writing the first edition, the author could not find any texts that encompassed the whole journey, but only those that concentrated on one part (e.g., post-op care in the ICU). The third edition tries to fill in gaps that were missing in the first edition and updates the content based on the most current research and guidelines. It emphasizes postoperative complications and the nursing interventions designed to prevent and treat them. The book provides updated coverage of risk factors for stroke and congenital heart disease and the cardiac rehabilitation chapter is updated with important patient education content. It presents Fast Facts “Pearls” in each chapter. The book discusses diagnostic testing, patient preparation for cardiac surgery, initial post-op complications, extended recovery complications, and stroke care. It educates readers about new antithrombotics and antiplatelet medications and offers new guidelines for use of ventricular assist devices. The book will help cardiac surgery nurses to provide competent and compassionate care to cardiac surgery patients.

Nurses who provide care that is culturally congruent with patients’ healthcare values and beliefs are better able to promote health among culturally diverse populations, prevent complications from delayed treatment, and ensure quality care for all patients. By identifying populations at high risk for disease, and delivering effective and culturally appropriate care, nurses help reduce healthcare costs and healthcare disparities at the same time. However, despite the rapidly increasing body of knowledge on cultural competency, the goals of becoming culturally competent and reducing healthcare disparities are not easy to achieve. Many nurses continue to express concern and confusion about what it really means to be culturally competent. The author takes the position that the process always begins with the nurse’s careful self-assessment. The book is divided into 14 chapters. The Staircase Model, developed by the author and presented in Chapter 1, assists nurses in this process. By applying the Staircase Self-Assessment Model, nurses are guided toward a conscientious self-reflection that enables them to determine their personal level of cultural competency in the care of a particular patient population. Chapter 2 offers a description of current cultural assessment models to be used by the nurse to explore the patient’s cultural background and healthcare needs. Chapter 3 focuses on nurses’ interactions with one another as colleagues when there are language or cultural differences between them. In Chapters 4 through 14, the reader explores topics and case examples that focus on more challenging nurse–patient situations. The journey to cultural competency is one of ongoing, conscientious self-reflection, cultural assessment, and collaboration between the patient and the nurse. The book offers nurse readers a step-by-step approach to developing those skills.

The process of triage occurs in a variety of settings around the world, from the battlefield to the private medical office. A triage process is essential to assist the care provider in prioritizing the needs of those seeking care, working to minimize or prevent a delay in care to the patient with the highest acuity risk. Triage methods and sources have evolved over many decades and now address the needs of different practice settings. In today’s rapidly changing healthcare environment, an efficient emergency department is critical to providing appropriate care at the appropriate time in the appropriate setting. A 5-level triage system helps to ensure that patients are not overtriaged, which depletes scarce resources that may be needed for a patient requiring immediate intervention, or undertriaged, which puts the patient at risk for deterioration while waiting to be seen. This book will assist the triage nurse to function in a more consistent, reliable, and safe manner. The five levels are Resuscitation, Emergent, Urgent, Semi-urgent, and Nonurgent, and they are based on patient acuity, severity of symptoms, the degree of risk for deterioration while waiting, and the need for additional resources. In the protocols, ascending levels of urgency are indicated by bolder headings and shading. Each protocol has been developed to ensure accuracy and consistency among the different protocols. Each protocol includes the following: title, key questions, acuity level/assessment, nursing considerations, and related protocols. This all-inclusive manual not only provides protocols to assist in daily triage activities but also includes appendices that provide essential information to help ensure that the nurses are trained in all aspects of the triage process.