Clinical nurse specialists leading research to improve practice in the use of ankle blood pressure readings.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) practice as it relates to leadership in clinical research through the presentation of a study on ankle blood pressure (BP) measurements led by the CNS.

Background: Under the direction of the CNS, staff nurses engaged in the EBP process to explore the association between arm and ankle BP measurements. This EBP project led to a research study which was directed and led by the CNS.

The effect of high-fidelity patient simulation on the critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills of new graduate nurses.

This study was conducted to determine whether the addition of high-fidelity patient simulation to new nurse orientation enhanced critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills. A pretest-posttest design was used to assess critical thinking and clinical decision-making skills in two groups of graduate nurses. Compared with the control group, the high-fidelity patient simulation group did not show significant improvement in mean critical thinking or clinical decision-making scores.

Improving hand hygiene adherence among nursing staff.

This quasi-experimental study explored initial and sustained effects of educational and behavioral interventions on hand hygiene adherence and the relationships between hand hygiene adherence and health care-associated infections. Education paired with positive reinforcement behavioral interventions significantly improved hand hygiene adherence after the first month (χ² = 4.27; P = .