At the 2023 National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition held in May, AACN President, Amanda Bettencourt, Ph.D., APRN, CCRN-K, ACCNS-P, told attendees that the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is going to take “bold steps” to implement the conditions necessary to create a Healthy Working Environment (HWE).
Echoing the theme of this year’s exposition, “Starting Now,” Bettencourt—who is also an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing—said, “So, starting now, we’re taking bold steps toward implementing AACN’s HWE standards. One step will focus on implementing the standards in individual units. The other step focuses on them in hospitals.”
The six areas that comprise AACN’s HWE include:
· Appropriate staffing
· Authentic leadership
· Skilled communication
· True collaboration
· Effective decision-making
· Meaningful recognition
Already making changes toward creating a healthy work environment are nurses in AACN’s Clinical Scene Investigator (CSI) Academy. According to Bettencourt, results of the program have evidenced “improved outcomes such as reduced CLABSIs, CAUTIs, and falls, along with an estimated $84 million in hospital savings.”
She added, “This fall, AACN will start to roll out 60 nurse-driven CSI teams to develop change projects focused specifically on unit-based HWE standards implementation. Several months after that, we have envisioned a multi-site project that will connect 45 hospitals across the country to study how zeroing in on the health of the work environment impacts the patient journey across the continuum of care—including outcomes for patients, nurses, and the organization.”
Bettencourt’s comments kicked off this year’s three-day exposition, which included over 200 educational sessions, online classroom sessions, posters, and exhibitors. Next year, the National Teaching Institute (NTI) will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
