Critical Impact: How Work Environments Affect Nurses, Patients

Activity Summary

The effect of work environments on nurses’ well-being and job satisfaction is a well-documented and continuing challenge among healthcare institutions. Increasingly, evidence shows that the health of work environments also significantly impacts patient outcomes – making it more critical than ever to create and maintain healthy work environments.

Join healthcare executive, educator, and researcher Beth Ulrich for a discussion of what it means to have a healthy work environment, how work environments impact patient outcomes and how to initiate discussions around creating a healthy work environment. The presentation will review "AACN Standards for Establishing and Sustaining Health Work Environments (HWE)," introduce evidence demonstrating the impact of environment on patients, share high-level findings from a recent work environments survey published in Critical Care Nurse" and offer tools to help start the HWE conversation on your unit.

Objectives

List the 6 Standards for Creating and Sustaining a Healthy Work Environment (HWE).
Discuss evidence that the health of the work environment impacts patient outcomes.
Identify an approach to initiate discussion about HWE in their own work environment.

Continuing Education Disclosure Statement

Successful Completion

Learners must attend/view/read the entire activity and complete the associated evaluation to be awarded the contact hours or CERP. No partial credit will be awarded.

Disclosure

This activity has been reviewed by the Nurse Planner. It has been determined that the material presented here shows no bias. Approval of a continuing education activity does not imply endorsement by AACN or ANCC of any commercial products displayed or discussed in conjunction with the activity.

Accreditation

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is accredited with distinction as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC's) Commission on Accreditation, ANCC Provider Number 0012 (60 min contact hour). AACN has been approved as a provider of continuing education in nursing by the California State Board of Registered Nursing, California Provider number CEP1036 contact hours (50 min contact hour).

AACN programming meets the standards for most states that require mandatory continuing education contact hours for license and/or certification renewal. AACN recommends consulting with your state board of nursing or credentialing organization before submitting CE to fulfill continuing education requirements.