Nursingmatters January 2015
n
Volume 26, Number 1
www.nursingmattersonline.com
InsIde: Future of nursing report: A Wisconsin profile
4
Climb for a cause results in near-death
6
nurse Anesthetists important to healthcare future
PAID
MADISON WI PERMIT NO. 1723
PRST STD US POSTAGE
7
Lecture showcases nurse-designed models Kathleen Corbett Freimuth
The 15th 2014 Littlefield Leadership Lecture was the first to be held in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing’s Signe Skott Cooper Hall. The lecture, presented Nov.14, was entitled “Transforming Health Care through Nursing Innovations: Lessons Learned.” Diana J. Mason, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, DHL (Hon.), American Academy of Nursing president and the Rudin Professor of Nursing at Hunter College-Bellevue School of Nursing of the City University of New York, gave the lecture. As chair of the Academy of Nursing’s “Raise the Voice” campaign for eight years, Mason has sought to make visible the innovative models of care and interventions developed by nurses – models that can help to transform U.S. healthcare. Accordingly, Mason’s lecture message was clear: Nurses are guarantors of quality care; healthcare must resolve to embrace them as innovators. According to the Commonwealth Fund’s comparative analysis of health systems (Davis et al., 2010) involving seven peer countries, Mason noted, the United States ranks sixth or seventh on healthcare quality, efficiency, access and ability for citizens to lead long, healthy lives. But it ranks first in healthcare spending. However, solutions to a costly, poor-performing system are in the offing. A reformed healthcare system, Mason said, must use nursedesigned innovations to improve patient outcomes. She gave numer-
Dean Katharyn May, UW SON greets speaker, Diana J. Mason, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, DHL (Hon.)
ous examples of models of care by nurse innovators already in play that respond to what patients and families need and want. Among them are Centering Pregnancy and Transitional Care models, the Eleventh Street Family Health Service, and the Nurse-Family Partnership initiative. These edge-runner models of care serve a triple aim: to improve patient experiences, to improve health outcomes and to reduce costs. Health, Mason proposed, must be defined holistically; must be individual-, family-, and community-centric; and must be built on strong relationships that are key to patient/family/community engagement. Healthcare’s future must move beyond a disease-based view of health to one of health promotion, wellness and public health buoyed by care models demonstrating significant clinical outcomes that are cost-effective. Nurse edgerunners are prepared to do this.
Following Mason’s lecture, Susan Zahner, DrPH, RN, FAAN, associate dean for academic affairs and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, moderated a responder panel of health-policy experts. The panel was comprised of Jonathan Jaffery, MD, a board-certified nephrologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Nancy Kaufman, MS, RN, founding president of the Strategic Vision Group, a health-consulting firm based in Milwaukee; and Kim E. Whitmore, MSN, RN, CPN, policy section chief and state health plan officer at the Office of Policy and Practice Alignment/Division of Public Health in Madison. The lecture audience, largely composed of nursing students from UW–Madison as well as Edgewood and Madison Area Technical College, appeared to leave the event inspired.n