AACN Certification Corporation Announces Board of Directors for Fiscal Year 2022

AACN Certification Corporation — the credentialing arm of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) offers 15 specialty, subspecialty and advanced practice nursing certification programs. Lisa Falcón, of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, serves as chair of the national board.

Mount Sinai’s Simulation Teaching and Research Center Earns Four Accreditations From Society for Simulation in Healthcare

Only center in the world with this combination of distinctions

Teamwork saves lives: COVID-19 hospital network shares key findings to improve care

Data sharing among 40 Michigan hospitals about the care and outcomes for thousands of inpatients with COVID-19 has led to reduced variation and findings that could inform care anywhere, including approaches for preventing blood clots and reducing overuse of antibiotics, as well as a risk prediction tool.

Fast-track Extubation Protocol Reduces Ventilation Time

High rates of variability in extubation times among cardiac surgery patients in Duke University Hospital’s cardiothoracic intensive care unit led to a new fast-track extubation protocol and redesigned care processes. As a result, more patients were extubated within six hours after being admitted to the ICU after surgery.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses selects OSU’s Happ as 2021 Distinguished Research Lecturer

Mary Beth Happ, from The Ohio State University College of Nursing, is the 40th recipient of AACN’s Distinguished Research Lecture award. Her research focuses on improving care and communication with communication-impaired patients, families and clinicians in high acuity and critical care settings.

Nurse-Driven Initiative Cuts CAUTI Rates in the ICU

An initiative at UPMC Williamsport used education and practice-related interventions to quickly reduce CAUTI rates and lay the groundwork for hospital-wide implementation with long-term impact. The bundle included a daily checklist and nurse-driven removal protocol for discontinuing indwelling catheter use.

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Announces Recipients of 2021 Circle of Excellence Awards

The 18 nurses who receive the Circle of Excellence award from AACN this year demonstrate an exceptional commitment to achieving excellent outcomes in the care of acutely and critically ill patients and their families, with solution-oriented approaches to challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Roadmap Will Enable Health Professional Societies to Address Critical Care Clinician Burnout

A new paper published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society provides a roadmap that critical care clinicians’ professional societies can use to address burnout. While strongly needed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the roadmap has taken on even greater urgency due to reports of increasing pandemic-related burnout.

Nurses Key to Reducing Stress for Families of ICU Patients

Nurses play a crucial role in helping to reduce the stress experienced by family members of critically ill patients, according to an article in Critical Care Nurse. A review of relevant research studies (2007-2019) found that, regardless of the patient’s age, family members’ stress fell into four main categories.

AACN CSI Academy Expands to Support Underserved Populations With Grant From Edwards Lifesciences Foundation

A $200,000 grants from Edwards Lifesciences Foundation will support the expansion of the AACN CSI Academy nurse leadership and innovation program to 10 cardiac surgery critical care and/or progressive care units that provide care to a significant proportion of patients from underserved populations, with an emphasis on Black communities.

University of Miami Health System and 4DMedical Launch Research Program Advancing Breakthrough Lung Technology

UHealth – the University of Miami Health System, the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, and 4DMedical recently announced the creation of the Functional Lung Imaging Research Program in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the Miller School.

Mount Sinai Develops Machine Learning Models to Predict Critical Illness and Mortality in COVID-19 Patients

Mount Sinai researchers have developed machine learning models that predict the likelihood of critical events and mortality in COVID-19 patients within clinically relevant time windows.

University of Miami Health System Sarcoidosis Program Recognized as Center of Excellence

With its multidisciplinary approach to patient care, research and education, the University of Miami Sarcoidosis Program has been recognized as one of world’s leading centers for this complex multisystem disorder by the World Association of Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Diseases/Foundation of Sarcoidosis Research (WASOG-FSR).

AACN-funded Research Influences Nursing Practice

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses invites clinicians and nurse scientists to submit research projects by Oct. 30, 2020, for the next application cycle, with total available funding of $160,000. The most recent recipients and their projects exemplify AACN’s commitment to nurse-driven research and evidence-based practice.

Last-resort life support option helped majority of critically ill COVID-19 patients survive, global study shows

It saved lives in past epidemics of lung-damaging viruses. Now, the life-support option known as ECMO appears to be doing the same for many of the critically ill COVID-19 patients who receive it. Patients in a new international study faced a staggeringly high risk of death, as ventilators failed to support their lungs. But after they were placed on ECMO, their actual death rate was less than 40%.

Physicians issue warning about rare neurological condition, expected to appear this fall

Pediatricians Henry David, MD, and Madan Kumar, DO, of the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital warn parents of young children to watch out for symptoms of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a rare neurological disorder linked to viral infections that can lead to permanent paralysis.

New Version of AACN’s Critical Care Orientation Course Includes Stand-alone and Specialty-focused Options

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses has released the latest version of its Essentials of Critical Care Orientation online course. Since its initial launch in 2002, ECCO has been used at more than 1,100 hospitals and healthcare facilities as an integral part of their critical care orientation or to supplement classroom-based education.

Outside Looking In: Study Shows Variation in Hospital Visitor & ICU Communication Policies Due to COVID-19

A new study documents how 49 hospitals in a state hit hard by COVID-19 changed their visitor policies and communications with families of intensive care unit patients in the first months of the pandemic — and how those efforts varied. Virtually all hospitals put in place a “no visitors” blanket policy, but 59% of them did allow some exceptions to this rule.

Standardized Curriculum Introduces ICU Nurses to ECMO

Vanderbilt University Medical Center designed and rapidly deployed a curriculum specifically to equip nurses new to ECMO with the knowledge, skills and confidence necessary to provide proficient and safe care for patients receiving ECMO. The pre-COVID ECMO training proved to be an effective, resource-efficient and pragmatic solution that can be used across different types of ICUs and across institutions.

Story Tips From Johns Hopkins Experts on COVID-19

It seems as though there will never be enough “thank-you’s” for the incredible doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff who are working around the clock to help patients with this dangerous coronavirus disease. Their dedication, determination and spirit enable Johns Hopkins to deliver the promise of medicine.

Lung Transplant Performed on a COVID-19 Patient at Northwestern Medicine

For the first time, surgeons at Northwestern Medicine performed a double-lung transplant on a patient whose lungs were damaged by COVID-19. The patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, spent six weeks in the COVID ICU on a ventilator and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a life support machine that does the work of the heart and lungs.

Robbins Family Awards Honor Exemplary Service In Nursing at Memorial Sloan Kettering

As we celebrate National Nurses Week, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and The Robbins Family Foundation recognize seven distinguished nursing staff members for their exemplary service. Each member of this select group is being honored with the inaugural 2020 Robbins Family Award for Nursing Excellence.

AANA Urges Congress to Provide Front-Line Healthcare Workers Proper Compensation During Pandemic

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to strain the physical and emotional well-being of front-line healthcare workers, many also are facing a financial burden and strain on their personal lives.

New Study Identifies Characteristics of Patients With Fatal COVID-19

In a new study, researchers identified the most common characteristics of 85 COVID-19 patients who died in Wuhan, China in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The study reports on commonalities of the largest group of coronavirus patient deaths to be studied to date. The paper was published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

COVID-19 just a problem for elderly people, right? Think again.

According to the CDC, based on the preliminary report on outcomes for patients in the U.S., when examining the age range of cases, the largest group with confirmed cases was ages 20-44 years old (29%). Among those hospitalized, adults ages 65-84 years old comprised over a third of patients, but young people were not immune; 1 in 5 of those needing hospitalization were between the ages of 20 and 44 years old. The CDC also reports that in cases with known outcomes, 20% of the deaths occurred in those ages 20-64 years old.