At Baylor Health Care System, many nurses do more to develop professionally than simply attend continuing education meetings and classes.
"I've seen a lot of people sleep through all those," says Dora Bradley, PhD, RN-BC, vice president of nursing professional development for Baylor Health Care System.
That's why Baylor Health Care System has in place ASPIRE, a voluntary professional-development program that awards cash bonuses to bedside nurses who complete it. ASPIRE stands for Achieving Synergy in Practice through Impact, Relationships and Evidence, and according to Bradley, the program is unique for its focus on patient outcomes.
"It's not, 'how many classes did I attend,'" she says. Instead, the program is "very outcomes focused. It's not just a checklist."
Nurses who participate in the program conduct projects around their whole practice in order to apply evidence-based practice and show how doing so improves patient care, says Bradley.
Among the very recent projects is one from a clinical transplant research nurse at Baylor Research Institute, which developed a low-health literacy education module that used pictures to help patients with cirrhosis of the liver better understand their condition.
A survey of patients showed that more than 40% of them showed improved health literacy after viewing the visual aids, which used pictures like a wine bottle marked with an "X" over it to tell patients to avoid drinking, reports Dallas/Fort Worth Healthcare Daily.
"It's about evidence-based practice," says Bradley. "Using current knowledge and current research and helping us modify our practices."
According to the Baylor website, the ASPIRE program "empowers our nurses to continue to develop expertise in caring for specific patient populations in a track of their choice." After getting approval for their projects—which range from decreasing patient falls, to decreasing urinary tract infections, to improving the continuum of care and patient handoffs from OR to ICU—nurses have up to a year to implement and complete them, applying research and learning to their real-world work.
Participants then must create and submit a portfolio with evidence of their work and submit it to a panel for review based on established criteria for each level of the program. Successful completion of the project qualifies nurses for the bonus.
Participating in ASPIRE, however, doesn't need to end at a single project for nurses. The program has several levels, each of which qualifies participants for different size bonuses. For example, the nurse colleague-level award provides a small bonus for successful completion, whereas the nurse mentor- and nurse leader-levels award more, according to the program's website.
Bradley says ASPIRE has also added supervisor levels, based on staff feedback. Also, there are criteria for participating in each of the levels. For example, to be at the leader level, a nurse must have a baccalaureate in nursing and be certified in a certain specialty, Bradley says.
Despite the promises of a bonus, Bradley insists that the cash isn't the primary reason nurses participate in the ASPIRE program. She says doing so helps them develop professionally, gain leadership skills, advance within the organization, and most importantly, improve patient outcomes. Many nurses who've successfully completed projects have moved into nurse manager roles.
"They're demonstrating that nursing makes a difference," Bradley says.
Developing leadership skills is also critical to the program's success, both for nurses and the organization. Bradley says participants learn that in order to really make a difference and influence other nurses to change their behaviors and implement better practices, they need to have data to back up those changes.
The program provides nurses with the tools to create a plan for change, helps them identify the resources they need to implement their project, and enables them to build and influence their networks.
"Leadership comes from being able to use information and being able to disseminate that information," Bradley says. "To be a leader... you have to have data and make decisions based on it."
Alexandra Wilson Pecci is an editor for HealthLeaders.
