Academic-Practice Partnership Pivot During COVID-19 Pandemic Surge.

Health care systems continue to experience the sequential aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with major care access, quality, safety, financial sustainability, and workforce considerations. Yet, academic-clinical partnership opportunities exist for transformational change, even when efforts to respond to a pandemic seem insurmountable. A nursing partnership between an academic health center nursing school and university health system provided short- and long-term support for the nursing workforce shortage during a COVID-19 surge. An academic-clinical integration framework guided planning, clinical support activities, outcomes achieved, technology innovations, and shared lessons associated with these efforts. The COVID-19 surge response steps included a call to action, preparation for surge support by the academic and clinical partners, and a team approach for clinical service delivery by faculty, students, and staff. Through the 6-week COVID-19 surge response, more than 10 000 hours of hospital nurse staffing were provided by nursing school faculty and students; over 770 worked shifts that provided approximately 30% of the full surge hospital supplemental staffing and approximately 46 000 vaccine encounters. Well-established academic-clinical nursing partnerships allow for quick pivots in the rapidly changing COVID-19 environment that can enhance nursing clinical proficiency and competency, augment clinically immersive learning, and reinforce analytics to measure health outcomes, lower costs, improve access, quality, safety, and workforce conditions.

Identifying Geriatric Patients at Risk for Malnutrition: A Quality Improvement Project.

Malnourishment leads to poor outcomes in the geriatric surgical population and national guidelines recommend preoperative nutrition screening. However, care practices do not reflect current recommendations. As a quality-improvement project, a validated nutritional screening tool, the Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form (MNA-SF), was implemented in the preoperative clinic of a large academic health center to identify patients at-risk for malnutrition prior to elective surgery. Patients were screened during the nursing intake process and categorized as no nutritional risk; at-risk for malnourishment; or severely malnourished. During the four-week screening period, 413 patients met inclusion criteria with 67.8% (n = 280) screened. No nutritional risk was identified in 77.5% (n = 215) of patients, 18.2% (n = 51) were at-risk, and 4.3% (n = 12) were malnourished. This project will inform and guide a prehabilitation plan for nutrition optimization to improve healthcare quality, outcomes, and costs in the geriatric surgical population.

Improving Transition to Practice: Integration of Advanced Cardiac Life Support Into a Baccalaureate Nursing Program.

BACKGROUND: Nursing students often lack the skills and confidence to intervene in the care of a deteriorating patient as they transition into clinical practice. Exposure to these situations is limited during their academic career. Our team sought to address this by embedding American Heart Association (AHA) advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) content into the curriculum and offering certification to senior-level students. METHOD: The senior skills course was redesigned to include education on current AHA ACLS guidelines and skills. ACLS algorithms were introduced and reinforced by mock code labs utilizing rapid cycle deliberate practice and interprofessional simulation. After completion of the semester, students were given the option to be ACLS certified. RESULTS: Students and stakeholders reported positively on the ability to certify in ACLS at our institution prior to graduation and reported increased confidence in their ability to manage patients with cardiopulmonary arrest. CONCLUSION: Providing simulated experiences for these clinical situations can reportedly increase confidence and improve preparedness in senior-level BSN students. [J Nurs Educ. 2019;58(3):182-184.].