Want to stay up-to-date on the latest evidence, practices and trends but don’t have much time? Take advantage of this one-stop collection of the most popular acute and critical care nursing resources offered by AACN in 2017. From continuing education (CE) activities to webinars and sepsis guidelines to moral distress, you’ll find the content you need to maintain your edge and continue providing the very best care to patients and their families.
To make it easier for you, we’ve gathered 2017’s top resources in six different categories: Continuing Education Activities, Webinars, Practice Alerts, AACN Store, Critical Care Nurse articles and American Journal of Critical Care articles.
Continuing Education Activities
AACN’s CE library contains over 200 activities to choose from. Your colleagues most often chose these four activities to earn CE contact hours and CERPs.
- Show Your Stuff and Watch Your Tone: Nurse Caring Behaviors - How do your patients know you care? This article provides insight into the perceptions of patients and families during the experience of mechanical ventilation.
- Stress and Coping of Critical Care Nurses After Unsuccessful Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation - Dealing with the loss of a patient is difficult. This article’s authors study the relationship between postcode stress and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.
- Reducing Acute Kidney Injury Due to Contrast Material: How Nurses Can Improve Patient Safety - Using acute kidney injury as an example, this article demonstrates how committed nurses just like you on interprofessional teams plan change and improve patient outcomes.
- Advancements in Pacemaker Technology: The Leadless Device - If you are curious about how technology improves patient care, this article discusses a new pacemaker technology that paces only the right ventricle, reducing lead-related complications.
AACN Webinars
What is everyone watching? These popular webinars on timely nursing topics connect the dots between conceptual knowledge and practical application, and offer CE hours as well.
- Updating Your Practice: The 2017 Sepsis Guidelines - This webinar summarizes the latest sepsis guidelines from the Society of Critical Care Medicine and includes eight tools to help you implement them in your own practice.
- Recognize Subtle Stroke Signs: Quick Action Saves Brain - Case scenarios in this webinar illustrate the symptoms of acute stroke and the correlation with neuroanatomy, so you can take early action to preserve your patient’s functional status.
- Saving a Life: Caring for the Potential Organ Donor - In this webinar, you’ll learn to intervene at just the right time to allow the Organ Procurement Organization time to discuss potential donation while preserving organ function.
- Palliative Care in the ICU: Critical Communication Skills - After viewing this webinar, you’ll be ready to enhance communication between the healthcare team and the families of critically ill patients.
Practice Alerts
Find important evidence-based nursing actions for the best care of your patients in these four most downloaded AACN Practice Alerts.
- Accurate Dysrhythmia Monitoring in Adults - Use the evidence in this Practice Alert to accurately monitor for dysrhythmias, so you can make effective clinical decisions for optimal patient care.
- Initial and Ongoing Verification of Feeding Tube Placement in Adults - Blind placement of a feeding tube can cause serious – and even fatal – complications. Reduce the risk for your patients by implementing the actions recommended in this Practice Alert.
- Assessment and Management of Delirium Across the Life Span - Delirium too often goes undetected and untreated, with potentially devastating long-term consequences. Review this Practice Alert to assess the expected practices for your unit.
- Ensuring Accurate ST-Segment Monitoring - Use this Practice Alert for guidance on implementing appropriate ST-segment monitoring to detect silent ischemia and obtain information that may influence treatment decisions.
AACN Store: Clinical Items
Your high-acuity and critical care nursing peers selected the following clinical resources from the AACN store more than any others. How might you use these in your practice?
- Fast Facts for Critical Care - A small but mighty resource for acute and critical care nurses, this ring-bound reference puts the latest treatment guidelines, advanced procedures, critical medications and emergency interventions at your fingertips.
- AACN Essentials of Critical Care Nursing, 3rd ed. - This enduring resource covers the must-know details on the care of critically ill adult patients and their families, helping you practice safely in critical care settings.
- Fast Facts for Cardiac Surgery - Our most popular add-on chapter for “Fast Facts for Critical Care,” this reference module presents facts on postoperative care and potential emergencies that may occur.
- Cardiac Surgery Advanced Life Support Course Manual, 2nd ed. - In this manual specifically focused on the patient after cardiac surgery, you’ll find tools and information for emergencies, abnormal progression and normal progression.
Articles in Critical Care Nurse
Join your colleagues in reading the most-accessed articles of 2017 in this nursing journal focused on the bedside care of patients with complex needs.
- Patients’ Hand Washing and Reducing Hospital-Acquired Infection - If you want to decrease infection rates in your unit, read this article. The highlighted project demonstrates that increased hand hygiene compliance by patients can influence infection rates.
- Complications of Peripheral Venous Access Devices: Prevention, Detection and Recovery Strategies - Short peripheral catheters and peripherally inserted central catheters have complications of their own. This article shares personal nursing practices to help you promote safe, quality care in the use of these catheters.
- Prophylactic Acid-Suppressive Therapy in Hospitalized Adults: Indications, Benefits and Infectious Complications (CE article) - This article will assist you in understanding how to screen for appropriate use of acid-suppressive therapy and when to discontinue its use.
- Nutrition Support Protocols: Enhancing Delivery of Enteral Nutrition - Nurses are in a unique position to take an active role in promoting the best nutritional outcomes for their patients by using and evaluating nutrition support protocols. This article guides you through the process.
Articles in American Journal of Critical Care
If you are seeking the best evidence for patient care, you’ll find it in these popular articles focused on advances in clinical research and their application at the bedside.
- Consequences of Moral Distress in the Intensive Care Unit: A Qualitative Study - Have you experienced negative effects from moral distress? Read about what researchers discovered that nurses, physicians, clinical nurse leaders and other health professionals have gone through.
- Critical Care Is Guided by Why - The editors of the American Journal of Critical Care share the importance of asking “Why?” to guide research and evidence-based practice in improving patient care and outcomes.
- Palliative Care Professional Development for Critical Care Nurses: A Multicenter Program (CE article) - Facilitators from AACN’s palliative care webinar contributed to this article offering a proven method of integrating palliative care into your daily nursing practice and helping improve your communication skills.
- Factors Influencing Patients’ Sleep in the Intensive Care Unit: Perceptions of Patients and Clinical Staff (CE article) - Gain perspective on the factors affecting patients’ ability to sleep in critical care units. The discussion addresses patients’ emotions and anxiety issues in addition to environmental and care factors.