"Reclaiming Our Priorities" resonated loudly with LEC-AACN and drove our educational and community service activities. Dave Hanson's theme was at the center of the "perfect storm" that converged to help us reclaim what is most important: our patients and families, our community, our nurses, and the safety and reliability of the care delivered in our units.
In November 2007, LEC-AACN hosted a collaborative between acute and critical care educators and nurses. The event attracted 75 educators, staff nurses, nurse managers, advanced practice nurses and students. Faculty from eight schools of nursing responded to our invitation to discuss how to foster collaboration between the academic and clinical setting, how to encourage participation in AACN and mentoring, and how to resolve competing priorities and challenges to student instruction.
Patient and family-centered care was the focus of our January 2008 program that included a synthesis of current literature and practice, an overview of national initiatives, and a panel of members from the Patient Family Advisory Council of a local hospital. Personal stories of family members and information on how to form Patient-Family Advisory Councils were vital parts of the program. To focus on the priority of our critical care units, LEC-AACN hosted a regional summit of nurse managers and medical directors from all area ICUs on the topic of Healthy Work Environments with Mary Fran Tracy as the keynote speaker. Finally, the spring seminar was planned to refocus on the basics of critical care nursing.
LEC-AACN also reached out to the Cleveland community in recognition that prioritizing the needs of patients and families meant supporting the community beyond the walls of the ICU. In addition to collections of toiletries distributed to a women's shelter, food was donated to a local food bank and allowed the facility to reopen in the face of depleted supplies.
