NEXus: Making Efficient Use of Limited Resources.

Faculty to teach and mentor doctoral nursing students are and will continue to be in short supply. Coupled with ever-increasing resource-constricted educational environments, doctoral programs are challenged to provide high-quality education with limited resources. The Nursing Education Exchange (NEXus) is a viable solution to help meet that challenge.

Successfully Coaching Nursing Staff to Publish Outcomes.

There is a need for bedside nurses to disseminate the results of evidence-based practice quality initiatives to a wider audience through publications in peer-reviewed journals. Barriers to publication are common and include lack of time, skills, experience, confidence, and tangible support. This article describes the structured approach, timeline, writing activities, and coaching guidance used to support the publication of 12 quality improvement articles in 1 nursing journal.

Normothermia for NeuroProtection: it's hot to be cool.

Fever is a significant contributor to secondary brain insult and management is a challenge for the neurocritical care team. The absence of standardized guidelines likely contributes to poor surveillance and undertreatment of increased temperature. A need for practice change was identified and this evidence-based practice project was initiated to compile sufficient evidence to develop, implement, and evaluate a treatment guideline to manage fever and maintain normothermia in the neurocritical care population.

Hawaii's statewide evidence-based practice program.

Hawaii's innovative statewide evidence-based practice program facilitates practice change across multiple health care systems. The innovation eliminated duplicative efforts and provided resources, was compatible with the values of health care organizations, and had experience with a pilot program. Interpersonal and mass media communication promoted and embedded the practice change.

Achieving army nursing evidence-based practice competencies through a civilian-military nurse partnership.

Despite the Institute of Medicine's goal of 90% of all practice being evidence-based by 2020, educational and practice institutions are not on target to achieve this goal. Evidence-based practice is one of 5 core elements of the Army Nurse Corps' patient care delivery system and a key focus of the Hawaii State Center for Nursing. In order to increase evidence-based practice (EBP), a civilian-military partnership was formed to include healthcare organizations in the state, optimize resources, and share strategies for successful practice changes statewide.

"Stars" aligned for evidence-based practice: a Triservice initiative in the Pacific.

Background: Establishing system-wide evidence-based nursing practice requires the support of senior leadership as well as adherence to a model that is sensitive to the challenges of practice change.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to establish a level of skill and knowledge among Army, Navy, and Air Force nurses to develop, to implement, and to evaluate best evidence-based practices (EBPs) for improved patient care.

Methods: Using the Iowa Model to guide their work, nurses from the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy joined efforts to establish EBP as a standard of nursing practice at four different military healthcare facilities in Hawaii: one tertiary medical center and three clinics on the island of Oahu.

Exploring deployment experiences of Army medical department personnel.

The purpose of this study was to describe Operation Iraqi/Enduring Freedom and Operation Desert Storm/Shield deployment experiences from the perspectives of 39 Army Medical Department personnel using a qualitative method in 2004. Thematic content analysis revealed themes from data collected during twelve focus groups. The themes with the most discussion that transcended across wars, branches, echelons of care, and grade were leadership and readiness concerns, followed closely by safety issues.

Adoption of a ventilator-associated pneumonia clinical practice guideline.

Conceptual Framework: The Academic Center for Evidence-based Practice (ACE) Star Model was used to implement an evidence-based clinical practice guideline (CPG) in order to decrease ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) incidence rates and ventilator days. The goal was to interrupt person-to-person transmission of bacteria and bacterial colonization using low-cost, evidence-based strategies to prevent VAP. DISCOVERY: Two geographically proximate medical centers, inclusive of five intensive care units located in the southwestern region of the United States had significant variations in their VAP rates.