Innovation in Nurse Staffing Models: Implementing a Tele-Critical Care Nurse Program in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.

A pediatric tele-critical care nursing program provides an extra layer of surveillance for patients and alerts bedside nurses of abnormal trends to mitigate adverse events. Although workforce turnover combined with patient complexity and acuity in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit strains the sustainability of a healthy work environment, these variables have also opened the door to an innovative approach to tele-critical care nursing care delivery. In addition to virtual surveillance, a clinical bedside intervention was developed to provide hands-on assistance to bedside nurses. This article describes the evolution of this novel technique for enhancing nursing care delivery.

Integration of Interprofessional Learning Into an Accredited Nurse Residency Program.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Practice Transition Accreditation Program® (PTAP) annually awards the Program Director of the Year at the ANCC Transition to Practice (TPP) Symposium. This year the Commission on Accreditation in Practice Transition Programs (COA-PTP) and ANCC PTAP/APPFA team is ecstatic to announce Dr. Simmy King, from Children's National Hospital, as the awardee. Dr. King's dedication to nurses in transition and quality improvement is impressive. Learn about the Children's National Hospital's ANCC PTAP journey and how they integrated interprofessional learning into their nurse residency. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2023;54(5):197-200.].

Outcomes of an Innovative Best Practice Clinical Immersion Framework: A Pilot Study.

BACKGROUND: Academic nursing has a long history of partnering with practice-based settings to provide clinical learning experiences for nursing students; however, these placements are not easily obtained, especially in pediatrics. APPROACH: A freestanding academic pediatric hospital and 3 academic nursing programs collaborated to provide clinical practice to nursing students hired in a practice-based internship program. A second aim was to pilot a best practice clinical immersion framework to provide academic credit to bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) students using a shared clinical syllabus and e-learning platform. OUTCOMES: Sixteen nursing students successfully completed the program; 11 (68.7%) completed the pre- and postevaluation with significant ( P < .05) changes in scores for 7 of the 20 questions. CONCLUSION: This best practice clinical immersion framework provided a strategy for obtaining clinical practice and academic credit, demonstrating the potential of innovative practice-academic partnerships. Further, this framework can be easily adapted in other practice-academic partnerships in all clinical areas.

Innovative Hospital-Based Pediatric Virtual Learning for Nursing Students.

BACKGROUND/PROBLEM: Specialty clinical sites, including pediatrics, are historically scarce in prelicensure nursing education. APPROACH: Simulation educators developed the Pediatric Virtual Clinical Learning Series (PVCLS) containing 4 virtual learning modules designed to enhance knowledge and skills of prelicensure nursing students in clinical pediatric care. Topics included documentation, rapid response, code blue, and a pediatric case. The learning sessions were initially offered as synchronous virtual classes and were then posted on our e-learning platform to serve as enduring asynchronous material. The target audience was nursing students and faculty from regional and nationally affiliated nursing schools with the pediatric hospital. OUTCOMES: Faculty and 185 nursing students participated in the synchronous or asynchronous learning sessions. Students' ratings that the virtual classes met their personal expectations were 4.02 to 4.56 of 5 for the synchronous sessions and 3.41 to 3.58 of 4 for the asynchronous sessions. CONCLUSIONS: The PVCLS provided both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences to fill a widening knowledge gap in pediatrics.

Becoming Trauma Informed: Validating a Tool to Assess Health Professional's Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice.

To effectively address the negative health effects of early childhood trauma and adversity, healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions must understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences and trauma on health. This study aimed to validate a tool to assess knowledge, attitude, and practice of trauma-informed care among interdisciplinary pediatric healthcare staff. METHODS: A 36-item survey tool, "Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Trauma-Informed Practice," was adopted and modified with permission from the author. We administered the survey electronically to 2,659 staff at a pediatric healthcare institution. To assess the tool's reliability and validity, internal consistency reliability testing, content validity, and construct validity assessments were conducted. RESULTS: A total of 592 surveys were collected, representing a 22.3% response rate. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that 21 items provided the strongest internal consistency reliability for the overall tool and each factor. The overall Cronbach's alpha for the 21-item tool was 0.86, with 0.84 for the knowledge factor, 0.74 for the attitude factor, and 0.78 for the practice factor. The goodness of fit based on this analysis was good to adequate, with a 0.077 root mean square error of approximation. CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare professionals and organizations are in a unique position to improve the health and well-being of their patients by implementing a trauma-informed approach to minimize the impact of adverse childhood experiences and trauma. This validated tool will allow organizations to identify gaps in knowledge, attitude, and practice among staff to subsequently begin developing pointed strategies to achieve a culture of trauma-informed practice.

Pediatric Nurses' Perceptions of Their Role in Antimicrobial Stewardship: A Focus Group Study.

PURPOSE: To explore pediatric nurses' perceptions of their role in antimicrobial stewardship. DESIGN AND METHODS: Twelve focus group sessions were conducted at a freestanding children's hospital including 90 nurses across a range of settings, units, and years of experience. Transcripts of the focus group sessions were jointly coded, from which themes were developed. RESULTS: Specific nursing roles in antibiotic stewardship identified include: (1) advocating for the patient, (2) communicating with the team, (3) administering medications safely, (4) educating caregivers, and (5) educating themselves. Identified barriers hindering effective execution of these roles include inconsistent inclusion on rounds and lack of institutional protocols for antibiotic use. CONCLUSION: Nurses easily identified numerous daily nursing tasks that fit within the framework of antimicrobial stewardship and desired additional education and engagement in antibiotic stewardship. IMPLICATIONS: Engaging nurses could improve the structure of antibiotic stewardship programs and break down the barriers that keep nurses from fulfilling their role.