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ANA awards five hospitals for outstanding nursing quality

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The American Nurses Association (ANA) honored five hospitals Jan. 27 for achieving outstanding nursing quality, based on the nursing performance measures they collect and report to ANA’s National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators® (NDNQI®), the only national database of nursing quality indicators.

The hospitals receiving the 2010 NDNQI Award for Outstanding Nursing Quality® were identified for top performance from among the more than 1,700 hospitals – one of every three hospitals nationwide – that report results to the database, which allows individual nursing units to compare their performance to similar units at other hospitals at the local, state, regional, and national levels.

The awards were announced at the 5th Annual NDNQI Conference in Miami, attended by more than 1,000 nursing and health care quality leaders. The award-winners demonstrated superior results and sustained improvement in patient outcomes and high nurse job satisfaction on the broad range of nursing-sensitive performance indicators tracked by NDNQI, such as hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, patient falls with injury, infections acquired as a result of hospitalization, and nurse turnover.

The winners are:

  • University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, KS – Academic Medical Center
  • Medical Center of the Rockies, Loveland, CO – Community Hospital
  • Poudre Valley Hospital, Fort Collins, CO – Teaching Hospital (4-time winner)
  • Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, Omaha, NE – Pediatric Hospital
  • Craig Hospital, Englewood, CO – Rehabilitation Hospital

“The NDNQI award recognizes a hospital’s ability to identify areas for improvement in its nursing performance and to design and implement effective strategies to achieve better patient outcomes,” says ANA President Karen A. Daley, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN. “The common traits of the award-winning hospitals are strong leadership, teamwork, commitment to ongoing improvement in patient care quality, continuous staff education, and efficient use of resources.”

NDNQI, a program of ANA’s National Center for Nursing Quality® (NCNQ®), was established in 1998. In any given quarter, more than 15,000 nursing units report performance data. This data not only provides links between patient outcomes and the quality of nursing services, but also can indicate connections between patient outcomes and nurse staffing levels, education, and skills, leading to more effective staffing plans. NDNQI also measures nurse satisfaction through a work environment survey.

The NDNQI conference also signaled the launch of the Nursing Quality Network, an Internet-based collaborative learning community providing an outlet for nurses from NDNQI-participating hospitals to share resources, experiences, and strategies that have led to improvements in nursing care quality and patient outcomes. The Nursing Quality Network features online forums and member discussions, and “Learning Voyages” led by nursing experts who provide educational materials and practical guidance.

Also in January, NCNQ released the third in a series of books highlighting the use of NDNQI in practice. NDNQI Case Studies in Nursing Quality Improvement provides a step-by-step guide on how to use NDNQI data to improve the quality of care, and includes 11 case studies describing how hospitals implemented new strategies and practices to achieve better patient outcomes.

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