Building research infrastructure and multisite studies in merged health care settings: A framework for nurse scientists and health care leaders.

Background: Merged healthcare settings, particularly those with Magnet designated sites, present distinct opportunities for PhD nurse scientists developing nursing research infrastructure.

Purpose: This article aims to assist nurse scientists and healthcare leaders in defining nurse scientist roles, and in developing research infrastructure for conducting multi-site research in merged settings.

Method: Practical strategies and a framework are provided to assist in building and navigating nurse scientist roles and research infrastructure development.

Best Fit Orientation: An Innovative Strategy to Onboard Newly Licensed Nurses.

The premature turnover of newly licensed registered nurses is a costly problem prompting leaders to consider new orientation approaches. This article describes the "Best Fit Orientation"-an innovative approach for onboarding newly licensed registered nurses. It features centralized hiring, individualized orientation on diverse units, and realistic job preview tenets promoting self-evaluation, change management, relationship building, and "best fit" unit selection.

Validation and Refinement of a Pain Information Model from EHR Flowsheet Data.

Background: Secondary use of electronic health record (EHR) data can reduce costs of research and quality reporting. However, EHR data must be consistent within and across organizations. Flowsheet data provide a rich source of interprofessional data and represents a high volume of documentation; however, content is not standardized.

EHR Documentation: The Hype and the Hope for Improving Nursing Satisfaction and Quality Outcomes.

The phenomenon of "data rich, information poor" in today's electronic health records (EHRs) is too often the reality for nursing. This article proposes the redesign of nursing documentation to leverage EHR data and clinical intelligence tools to support evidence-based, personalized nursing care across the continuum. The principles consider the need to optimize nurses' documentation efficiency while contributing to knowledge generation.

An IT innovation for individualizing care: success with clinicians leading the way.

In 2004, the Knowledge-based Nursing Initiative (KBNI) began as a partnership between a university-based college of nursing, an informatics vendor, and a large, integrated health care system. The goal was to develop a process for translating evidence into actionable recommendations, embedding the recommendations into the computerized decision support and documentation systems, and supporting nurses' use of the nursing process to individualize care. This paper will describe the essential administrative, information technology (IT), educational and clinical support activities that were used to deploy this innovation into the electronic health record (EHR) and workflow of nurses on two acute care medical pilot units in July of 2008.

Interdisciplinary shared decision-making: taking shared governance to the next level.

Healthcare organizations have been challenged to make high-quality, safe, and reliable care more affordable, portable, transparent, and efficient. Skillful leadership and contributions from all members of the organization are needed to accomplish these changes. This article describes how one organization, driven by a vision for finding better ways, embarked on a journey to design, implement, and refine their model for interdisciplinary shared decision-making (SDM).

Partnering with patients--a concept ready for action.

Aim: This paper is a report of a concept analysis of partnership within the context of a professional-patient relationship.

Background: The concept of partnership has been previously characterized as immature, with a need for further consensus and consistency. Critical attributes previously reported include relationship, power sharing and negotiation, with empowerment as the primary consequence.

Partnering with patients and families in designing visual cues to prevent falls in hospitalized elders.

Prevention of falls in hospitalized elderly is critical to avoid injury and maintain independence. As part of a comprehensive program, nursing staff in a medical telemetry unit partnered with patients and their families to design and implement an educational poster to prevent falls. Ongoing patient/family feedback was used to modify the poster until it was appealing and effective for patients.