Press Release: Phase II

April 2007 Principal Investigator Linda Cronenwett received $1,094,477 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to fund Phase II of the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project. The award will enable Cronenwett and project Co-Investigator Gwen Sherwood to continue work on Phase I that has been in progress since October 2005. The long-range goal of QSEN is to reshape professional identity formation in nursing to include commitment to quality and safety competencies recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). To date, QSEN faculty have defined quality and safety competencies for nursing and proposed targets for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be developed in nursing pre-licensure programs for each competency: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. They also completed a national survey of baccalaureate program leaders and a state survey of associate degree educators to assess beliefs about the extent to which the competencies are included in current curricula, the level of satisfaction with student competency achievement, and the level of faculty expertise in teaching the competencies. QSEN.org was launched in April 2007 to feature teaching strategies and resources. In Phase II, QSEN will partner with representatives of organizations that represent advanced practice nurses to draft proposed knowledge, skills, and attitude targets for graduate education. Phase II also includes work with 15 pilot schools committed to active engagement in curricular change to incorporate quality and safety competencies. Other project staff from UNC-Chapel Hill:

• Denise Hirst, project manager

• John Carlson, statistician

• Jean Blackwell, UNC Health Sciences Library

QSEN content and pedagogical specialists:

• Deborah Ward, University of Washington – Patient-Centered Care

• Joanne Disch, University of Minnesota – Teamwork and Collaboration

• Dori Taylor-Sullivan, Duke University – Evidence-Based Practice

• Judith Warren, University of Kansas – Informatics

• Jean Johnson, George Washington University – Quality Improvement

• Jane Barnsteiner, University of Pennsylvania – Safety

• Shirley Moore, Case Western Reserve University – Interprofessional Learning

• Pamela Ironside, Indiana University – Narrative Pedagogies

• Carol Durham, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Nursing – Simulation

• Lisa Day, University of California-San Francisco – Clinical Site Teaching

QSEN Advisory Board members:

• Paul Batalden, Dartmouth Medical School

• Geraldine Bednash, Executive Director, American Association of Colleges of Nursing

• Karen Drenkard, Robert Wood Johnson Executive Fellow and Chief Nursing Executive, Inova Health System; Falls Church, Virginia

• Leslie Hall, University of Missouri-Columbia

• Mary (Polly) Johnson, (former) Executive Director, North Carolina State Board of Nursing

• Maryjoan Ladden, Harvard Medical School

• Audrey Nelson, Director, Patient Safety Research Center, Veterans Administration; Tampa, Florida

• Joanne Pohl, University of Michigan and National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties

• M. Elaine Tagliareni, Community College of Philadelphia and National League for Nursing

• Jeanne Floyd, Executive Director, American Nurses Credentialing Center