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Louise LaFramboise, Ph.D. |
The phase II project, called Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, will strive to boost the commitment to Institute of Medicine (IOM) quality and safety competencies in pre-licensure nursing programs.
The UNMC College of Nursing will help determine what resources, faculty development and changes will aid in the development of competencies in nursing curriculum.
Principal investigator Linda Cronenwett, Ph.D., dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, along with national experts, selected the pilot schools from 53 applications.
“We know that there are significant problems related to safety and quality in the U.S. health care system,” Dr. Cronenwett said. “To improve care, we have to educate future health care professionals so that they know what good care is, how to identify gaps between good care and the local care they provide, and what activities they could initiate, if necessary, to close any gaps. These pilot schools will be integral to our learning about what educational strategies work to accomplish this goal.”
Pilot schools will be supported in their curricular change efforts in six areas, including patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety and informatics.
“The grant is offering us the opportunity to take an in-depth look at our curriculum and to revise it to incorporate the IOM competencies,” said Louise LaFramboise, Ph.D., principal investigator of the grant at UNMC and director of the undergraduate program in the College of Nursing. “We will begin by completing a map of our entire curriculum, and then move to revising the courses. We will incorporate clinical experiences designed to focus students’ attention on patient safety, patient-centered care, informatics, quality improvement, and evidenced-based practice.”
The project will begin in Omaha and ultimately involve UNMC nursing divisions in Lincoln, Kearney and Scottsbluff, Dr. LaFramboise said.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation’s largest philanthropic organization and is devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of Americans and focusing on pressing health and health care issues. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies is a non-profit resource for science-based advice on matters of biomedical science, medicine, and health.