Building a research-focused academic practice partnership: A stepwise approach.

The 20th century began a period of reform in nursing education and practice, with more nurses receiving advanced degrees and serving in key leadership roles throughout healthcare organizations. During this period, the transformation of the healthcare delivery system encouraged innovation and collaboration between academic nursing programs and other healthcare entities to develop partnerships based on a shared vision and goals. As a result, nurses are negotiating academic-practice partnership agreements and leading interprofessional teams to meet the needs of collaborating organizations. This article describes a stepwise approach to building a research-focused academic practice partnership, from a needs assessment to an evaluation of the partnership.

Academic-Practice Partnership to Prevent and Manage Pressure Injuries: An Evidence-Based Quality Improvement Initiative.

PURPOSE: This evidence-based quality improvement (EBQI) initiative examined the effect of an academic-practice (A-P) partnership on improvement in quality measures in an acute care setting, specifically hospital-acquired pressure injury (HAPI) prevention and management. DESIGN: A pre-/postdescriptive design was conducted using the practice-informed active learning program to guide the project. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: The EBQI initiative was conducted at a Southern Gulf-Coast university college of nursing and clinical nursing practice leaders at its affiliated 406-bed academic health center/level I trauma center, regional burn center, and comprehensive stroke center. Both institutions are located in the Southeastern United States (Mobile, Alabama). METHODS: The A-P council used a participatory action research approach and developed a practice-informed active learning program incorporating Melnyk's evidence-based practice (EBP) steps, the Donabedian Model and the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Stakeholder Engagement in Question Development and Prioritization (SEED). METHOD: Hospital-acquired pressure injuries were selected as the quality outcome to address. To identify HAPI prevention/management evidenced-based practices, the A-P council conducted an integrative literature review and developed a concept map and the Pressure Injury Prevention Gap Analysis Instrument. The gap analysis identified significant gaps between EBP and current pressure injury prevention practices, with priority ranking of gaps for action by key stakeholders. OUTCOME: Following the practice-informed active learning program objectives, the A-P council identified 79 HAPI best EBPs organized by Donabedian domains of structure, process, and outcome and prioritized 3 gaps for action. Actions to address the HAPI gaps included: restructuring the hospital HAPI program, incorporating appropriate leadership to guide the HAPI program, modifying the HAPI reporting process, hiring specialized experts (WOC nurses) with emphasis on pressure injury prevention, establishing a standardized HAPI prevalence survey, improving electronic documentation, increasing transparency of HAPI reporting, improving HAPI accountability at the unit level, and exploring technology to enhance skin assessment. While HAPIs increased by 6.3% from 2019 (n = 104) to 2021 (n = 111), HAPI severity (Stages 3 and 4) decreased by 9.9% from 2019 (n = 14, or 13.46%) to 2021 (n = 4, or 3.6%). IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Our experience with this quality improvement initiative indicates that an A-P partnership can provide a model to address complex clinical problems, quality indicators, and quality improvement while advancing a culture of inquiry and scholarship and building nursing capacity.

Systematically Building a Model to Support and Unify Advanced Practice Providers.

Nursing leaders at the University of South Alabama (USA) Health collaborated to explore the need for a structured practice model for advanced practice providers (APP). The goal of this collaboration was to create an organizational structure where APPs could thrive clinically and professionally.

Operational Failures Detected by Frontline Acute Care Nurses.

Frontline nurses encounter operational failures (OFs), or breakdowns in system processes, that hinder care, erode quality, and threaten patient safety. Previous research has relied on external observers to identify OFs; nurses have been passive participants in the identification of system failures that impede their ability to deliver safe and effective care. To better understand frontline nurses' direct experiences with OFs in hospitals, we conducted a multi-site study within a national research network to describe the rate and categories of OFs detected by nurses as they provided direct patient care. Data were collected by 774 nurses working in 67 adult and pediatric medical-surgical units in 23 hospitals. Nurses systematically recorded data about OFs encountered during 10 work shifts over a 20-day period. In total, nurses reported 27,298 OFs over 4,497 shifts, a rate of 6.07 OFs per shift. The highest rate of failures occurred in the category of Equipment/Supplies, and the lowest rate occurred in the category of Physical Unit/Layout. No differences in OF rate were detected based on hospital size, teaching status, or unit type. Given the scale of this study, we conclude that OFs are frequent and varied across system processes, and that organizations may readily obtain crucial information about OFs from frontline nurses. Nurses' detection of OFs could provide organizations with rich, real-time information about system operations to improve organizational reliability. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Frontline Nurse Engagement and Empowerment: Characteristics and Processes for Building Leadership Capacity.

Improving health care quality is the responsibility of nurses at all levels of the organization. This article describes a study that examined frontline staff nurses' professional practice characteristics to advance leadership through the understanding of relationships among practice environment, quality improvement, and outcomes. The study design was a descriptive quantitative design at 2 time points. Findings support the use of research and quality processes to build leadership capacity required for positive resolution of interdisciplinary operational failures.

Bridge to shared governance: developing leadership of frontline nurses.

Transforming health care systems to improve quality is the responsibility of nurse executives and frontline nurses alike, yet frontline nurses are often ill-prepared to share leadership and accountability needed for transformation. The aim of this qualitative study was to describe the process used to build leadership capacity of frontline nurses engaged in resolving operational failures interrupting nursing care. The leadership development process served to bridge staff transition to shared governance. This institutional review board-approved qualitative research was designed to identify the effects of mentoring by the chief nursing officer and faculty partners on leadership development of frontline nurses working to find solutions to operational failures. Twelve nurses from 4 medical surgical units participated in a Frontline Innovations' nurse-led interdisciplinary group, which met over 18 months. Transcriptions of audiotaped meetings were analyzed for emerging process and outcome themes. The transcripts revealed a robust leadership development journey of frontline nurses engaged in process improvement. Themes that emerged from the mentoring process included engagement, collaboration, empowerment, confidence, and lifelong learning. The mentoring process provided frontline nurses the leadership foundation necessary to initiate shared governance.