Deborah Klein

Deborah Klein, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC, CCRN, CHFN, FAHA, serves a three-year term as a director on the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) board of directors from July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2017. She serves a concurrent one-year term on the AACN Certification Corporation board from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017. She was also AACN board secretary from July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016.

Klein is a clinical nurse specialist (CNS) in the Coronary ICU, Heart Failure ICU and Cardiac Short Stay/PACU/CARU at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. She began her career with Cleveland Clinic in 2000 as a CNS in the Coronary ICU/Heart Failure ICU.

From 1982-2000, she worked as a trauma/critical care nursing CNS and a surgical ICU CNS at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland. Earlier in her career, she was a staff nurse at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Kaiser Permanente Foundation in Cleveland and University Hospitals of Cleveland. Klein is also an adjunct faculty member at Kent State University School of Nursing in Ohio and a clinical instructor at Case Western Reserve University, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing in Cleveland.

A member of the board of the AACN Lake Erie Chapter and an AACN ambassador since 2012, Klein served on AACN's CNS Scope and Standards Task Force and E-Learning Review Panel on Promoting Excellence in Palliative and End-of-Life Care in 2013. She also served as AACN's representative on the Cardiovascular Nursing Scope and Standards Work Group of the American Nurses Association from 2013-2014.

She chaired the planning committee for the American Heart Association's Cardiovascular Nursing Clinical Symposium in 2013 and is a member of the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists, Society of Critical Care Medicine and American Association of Heart Failure Nurses. Klein also became an End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium trainer. She has lectured on therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest and is second editor of "Introduction to Critical Care Nursing" (2005, 2009 and 2013 editions). The 2009 edition received an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year award.

Klein was honored as an AACN Circle of Excellence recipient in 2011.

She earned a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Cleveland.