Nurses should engage patients in their care plan, according to this CNO.

Nurses wear many hats in the industry, but their primary focus is on patient interaction and care delivery.

According to Cassie Lewis, chief nursing officer at Bon Secours’ Richmond market, part of Bon Secours Mercy Health, and HealthLeaders Exchange member, improving patient engagement begins with the day-to-day interactions between the patient and the bedside nurses who care for them.

Here are some tips on how nurses can engage with patients and make them feel more comfortable. 

Click here to listen to the accompanying podcast.

The HealthLeaders Exchange is an exclusive, executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights.

Please join the community at our LinkedIn page. To inquire about attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event and becoming a member, email us at  exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.

WVU Medicine has invested in a diploma program, says this CNE.

For years in West Virginia, nursing education has taken place within educational institutions.

Registered nurses typically complete a two-to-four-year program, then enter the workforce after earning their degrees and taking the proper exams.

However, WVU Medicine West Virginia University is investing in an alternative route.

According to Melanie Heuston, chief nurse executive at WVU Medicine and HealthLeaders Exchange member, the health system has implemented a hospital-based nursing school and registered nursing diploma program through its Center for Nursing Education.

"We're doing something that's a bit unconventional in the academic field," Heuston said. “We are developing and sponsoring our own 2-year diploma program that will serve as a pipeline of new nurses for our 24 hospitals.”

Heuston explained there are diploma programs that exist across the United States, but that this program is one of the first of its kind.

"We really wanted to be a bridge to people getting further education, so we are developing our Center for Nursing Education to offer West Virginians an alternative to the traditional path to becoming a nurse.”

Program specifics

Heuston described the program as a traditional education with a contemporary approach. The program is free of charge and students are given all necessary materials, including computers, books, and uniforms.

"We have been developing it for over a year, a very short timeline," Heuston said. "We are making an enormous investment in the new school to ensure students are immersed in a state-of-the-art facility.”

Recruiting faculty for the program has been successful, according to Heuston, and so has enrollment.

"We opened our enrollment this past summer on August 15," Heuston said. “Within a week, we had over 100 applicants, and today…we have 620 applicants [who] filled out the entire application for our inaugural class of 24." 

The students will begin the program in August 2025, following a rigorous selection process that includes interviews. Enrollment is broad-based, Heuston explained, which is also known as holistic admissions.

"We’re not just looking at test scores," Heuston said. "We're actually going to interview for caring attributes to be ensured that they're the type of nurses that really want to work in a med surg clinical environment."

Program goals

The goal is to promote impatient bedside nursing as a long-standing career, according to Heuston.

"We're going to interview every candidate and we're hoping to expand very quickly," Heuston said. "The State Board of Nursing only allows us to take 24 students until we have the demonstrated outcomes."

WVU Medicine partnered with Beebe Healthcare's Margaret Rollins School of Nursing to learn about lessons learned, according to Heuston.

"They have been supportive partners," Heuston said. "They want to see us succeed and have shared everything that they've done well to integrate into our environment." 

Ultimately, the program is meant to be a pathway for continued education. Heuston said they have signed memorandums of understanding for local schools as well as with West Virginia University, to give the students a bridge to a bachelor's degree.

"We really want to promote the idea within our clinical ladder," Heuston said, "and give them free tuition to get their baccalaureate degree as well."

The HealthLeaders Exchange is an exclusive, executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights.

Please join the community at our LinkedIn page. To inquire about attending a HealthLeaders Exchange event and becoming a member, email us at exchange@healthleadersmedia.com.

The NCSBN ID can be used as a unique nurse identifier, according to the organization.

Health systems are feeling the effects off the nursing shortages as they try recruit and retain qualified nurses who want to continue being a part of the industry.

As more innovative staffing solutions arise, it's up to CNOs and other nurse leadership to take advantage of the systems and tools that are already in place to build a strong workforce.

According to Jason Schwartz, director of member outreach at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), and Matt Sterzinger, director of information technology, one of those tools could be the NCSBN ID number. 

Here's an introduction to the NCSBN ID. 

Click here to read the accompanying article. 

 

The NCSBN ID can be used in a central database to keep track of nurses and build the workforce, according to the NCSBN.

Amid the nursing shortage, health systems are struggling to recruit and retain qualified nurses who want to continue being a part of the industry.

Part of this equation is ensuring that nurses have career opportunities available to them and options to advance their education. While health systems can work on giving them these resources, it's also up to CNOs and other nurse leadership to take advantage of the systems and tools that are already in place to build a strong workforce.

According to Jason Schwartz, director of member outreach at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), and Matt Sterzinger, director of information technology, one of those tools could be the NCSBN ID number. 

What is it?  

The NCSBN ID is a unique nurse identifier, according to Sterzinger, and is used exclusively in nursing. The number is issued automatically by NCSBN during the NCLEX examination process, and it follows the nurse for their entire career.

"Typically, a nurse will go to a nursing education program," Sterzinger said. "They’ll take the NCLEX exam, and then after the exam, they're licensed by a state board of nursing, and then they can begin their career as a nurse."

The information attached to the ID number has to do with the nurse that it's assigned to. According to Schwartz, nurses might have licenses in single or multiple states, and they might have different kinds of licenses. The ID is associated with all of a nurse's licensure history and disciplinary history through the state boards.

"Through our work with the state boards, all of their different nursing licenses across jurisdictions and across license types are automatically linked to the NCSBN ID from their educational institutions, employers, etc.," Schwartz said. "If they're using the NCSBN ID, they have the power then to attach even more."

The data can be found through Nursys, a national database run by NCSBN that contains all of the nurse license and disciplinary information. According to Sterzinger, NCSBN has data sharing agreements through their membership with the state boards of nursing, and they all contribute their license and disciplinary information.

"As a result, we are able to take all that license information and tie it together with one individual," Sterzinger said, "and assign that unique nurse identifier."

In terms of privacy, the NCSBN ID itself is public. Sterzinger explained that there is a subset of license and disciplinary information which is considered to be public record, and users can go to the Nursys database to find that information. Sterzinger compared the NCSBN ID to a vehicle identification number, or VIN number, on a car.

"That identifier is tied to that car, and it is connecting all these different datasets and systems around the life of that car, and it's publicly available," Sterzinger said. "You can walk up to any car, and you can look through the front windshield and down in the dashboard and you can see that VIN."

What are the benefits?  

There are several use cases for the NCSBN ID, including use in education programs. According to Schwartz, the University of Alabama in Huntsville is using the ID to ensure that graduate students are maintaining active, current, and valid nursing licenses and tracking their success and their career pathways after they leave.

"With the NCSBN ID, it's possible for an education program to know what percentage of RN grads are going on to become APRNs, or what areas of the workforce they are ending up in," Schwartz said.

The ID can also be used to address workforce shortages and quantify the value of nursing. Nurses are involved in many different aspects of care delivery, Schwartz explained, but the data is captured in different systems, with no convenient way of sharing information.

"With the NCSBN ID, multiple systems can talk to each other, multiple data sets can be exchanged," Schwartz said, "but there's no personally identifying information that needs to travel."

For health systems, the NCSBN ID can help with screening and verification processes, and to make sure that nurses are keeping their licenses up to date. For CNOs specifically, Schwartz explained that the ID can be used to improve quality and training over time.

"If you're able to link the care provided by a specific nurse to a particular outcome over time, what you may find is [that] nurse is having more success than others," Schwartz said. "Are there things that that nurse is doing where we can provide training to other nurses, or perhaps if the outcomes are worse than average, is remediation or professional development needed to bring things on par with expectations?"

The NCSBN ID also provides value to the patient, according to Schwartz. Patients are able to look up their nurses and see their licenses and career history.

"Through Nursys and through the NCSBN ID, we improve upon the transparency of nursing care to the public, [and] to consumers as well," Schwartz said.

"There's a lot of studying going on regarding the nursing workforce, and aging, and where they’re coming from," Sterzinger said. "The NCSBN ID can be used to help researchers tie together different data sets and get those results so that we can make sure that we have a solid nursing workforce in the future."