Ambassador Best Practices - General AACN

During Nurses' Week 2010, our educators contacted me for more information regarding the local chapter. I obtained promotional materials, brochures and pens for the Nurses' Day event and our educator hosted a table at the event displaying all the materials.
 

I’m currently taking the online course for precepting via the AACN website and our hospital offers this course at no cost to us. It is a very comprehensive and informative course.

This is required before being able to attend other classes. I attended a lot of classes to keep my practice up and was happy to see that my co-workers were also present.

We were able to attend those classes as well, at no cost through our facility. The classes were IABP and CRRT, EKG and diabetic and renal care classes.  

1. We widened our horizons at our facility.
2. Courses were provided at no cost to us.
3. Managerial support for approving the courses in spite of the hard economic times.
4. Daily best practice implementation and continuous education opportunities.

Goals are to continuously improve my practice and skill level and also for my co-workers who attend the classes. The classes really ensure that we stay current with the standards of care and best practice.

I was chosen to be a preceptor, and this to me means my managers and educators trust and believe that I have the skill set and knowledge base to be in that role. This has further helped to reinforce my confidence that I am a competent nurse. 

I have developed and maintained an AACN bulletin board, called the “Go to Area” in our break room. It is a place where our staff know they can find all things AACN, including a link to me.

Below the board is a portable file filled with AACN applications for certification, membership and recertification. It also contains the many handouts we have as well as AACNs site information.

Posted on the board is an ongoing bulk membership sign up so everyone knows how many staff will be joining, the cost and benefits of membership.

In the last 6 months we have had 2 renewing members and 15 new members. During the 6 months prior we had 24 new members and 1 renewal. This has been very successful.

We have linked AACN up to our Professional Performance Division, which I lead with one other member). This is part of our ground breaking Quality Committee established last year.

The idea behind this is that we are highly skilled nurses with a duty to be our best for our patients. We stress ongoing education, staying current in our practice and becoming involved in our unit and professional community. Our staff is encouraged to join AACN and to climb the clinical ladder in our unit.

This has worked well over the last six months.

1. Making all the information about membership and applications easy to find. Also ensuring applications are complete and returned to me (plus a $9.00 discount received).
2. Linking AACN to our Professional Division — it shows staff how AACN supports critical care nurses in maintaining our skills and professional practice.
3. As an ambassador I need to be available with answers that support and facilitate membership. So I made sure everyone knew who I was, what I do and what AACN and I can do for them. 

The goal was to have 25% of our unit become members within the year. My data is the increasing membership we have in our unit.

We have 42 members who have joined or renewed since May 2010. We not only have the new members, but many of our current staff already were members.

I am currently in the process of collecting data on staff membership status and will be able to report on the membership percentage when completed.

I provide several critical and progressive care orientation classes. This is a way to start at the very beginning by introducing new nurses to AACN.

I discussed how standards and evidence has been integrated into practice, some led by staff nurses who attended NTI and made improvements in care by holding the teams to best standards.

1. Discussed membership in AACN during orientation and urged new nurses to join. We currently use the  ECCO program along with didactic.
2. Holding staff nurses up as role models — highlighting their attendance at NTI and how improvements in practice might be started.
3. I am publication chair of our local chapter and send out a newsletter on a quarterly basis. I make copies of the newsletter and post them in the ICU and progressive care floors. 

1. Nurse, physician and respiratory therapy buy-in
2. Daily review of what needs to be done to prevent these infections
3. Practice makes perfect

I wear my AACN ambassador pin on my white coat and it prompts people to ask questions. I find opportunities in conversations with management and frontline staff to discuss the benefits of AACN.

I invited the local chapter president to set up an information table to sign up potential members at an upcoming head trauma conference. 

1. Creatively finding ways to show the benefits of AACN to staff in their everyday practice
2. Utilizing certification as a means to achieving high marks on their professional growth performance evaluation
3. Sharing tools made available by AACN for bedside staff (pocket cards, etc) 

I was at another facility doing training on a new program being implemented at my hospital. I saw signs that stated "Healing Hearts Need Rest" in a heart-shaped sign on the door. I brought the idea back to my unit-based council. 

Since we have open visiting it's tough to get a handle on visitors at times and have patients rest adequately. We implemented a unit quiet time between 1300 and 1500 every day.

Lights go down, doors get closed, families are asked to step out and let their family members rest. No tests, baths, etc. to be done (if possible) between these times.

It's been a positive experience for patients, families and staff alike.

1. Patient-driven needs.
2. Family needs — they need encouragement to leave; sometimes they feel they can't.
3. Staff can have lunch, catch up on charting and plan the rest of their day. 

First set of data being collected now. Survey before implementation on June 15, 2010, asked staff:

1. If they felt patients received adequate rest.
2. If families felt the need to stay around to be with the patient in mid-day.
3. If RNs felt the noise level was too loud.

Outcomes pending. 

To energize our staff with a kickoff to our new fiscal year we created a life-sized Stan Tall poster with a header that said "Grant Medical Center Nurses Stand Tall."

Each staff member then decorated their own Stan Tall to look like themselves and wrote what they stood tall for. This was placed in the hallway in the entrance to our units.

We have had many positive comments from patients and families and many have requested their own Stan Tall to decorate. It turned into somewhat of a competition for staff to create a Stan that looked the most like them.

Good morale builder and most staff are very proud of what they stand for.

1. Created physician champions
2. Strong, shared-governance structure
3. Supportive leadership — adequate resources

This is more related to our healthy work environment or work-life balance for our unit scorecard.

We would expect this to not be an individual measurement, but as a yearly associate survey in our employer of choice scores, teamwork scores and job satisfaction scores.