Nurse Safety Scholar-in-Residence Program
Joint Commission Resources, Inc. (JCR) and Hill-Rom have created the Nurse Safety Scholar-in-Residence Program to translate safe patient care from evidence to the bedside. The initial emphasis of this unique partnership is to develop tools and best practices to maintain skin integrity and prevent pressure ulcers; an estimated 2.5 million patients are treated for pressure ulcers in acute care facilities in the United States each year, according to studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003 and 2006.
More recently, a December 2008 report by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) states that in 2006 there were 503,000 hospital stays with pressure ulcers noted as a diagnosis, nearly an 80% increase since 1993.
The program aims to foster the professional development of expert nurse clinicians and scholars to become translators of evidence into practice, and to identify best practice processes and technology associated with providing safe care for specific clinical problems. The outcomes from this project will contribute to knowledge related to minimizing and preventing harm to patients. A multi-site hospital collaborative project will be established to assist with meeting these aims.
Follow Ms. Jankowski as she chronicles her successes and challenges throughout the scholarship year on her blog.
Project milestones.