Improving Patient Safety through Standardization of the Hand-off Process for Post-operative Pediatric Cardiothoracic Patients

The 2007 NACNS National Conference was held in Phoenix, Arizona, February 28YMarch 1. Over 300 Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS), graduate faculty, nurse administrators, and nurse researchers attended. This year’s theme, CNS Outcomes: Ensuring Safety and Quality, demonstrated how essential the CNS’s influence is on the environment as well as the CNS role in implementing evidence-based practice. There were 72 abstracts for podium and poster presentations selected in addition to student posters. The abstracts addressed the 3 spheres of CNS practice emphasizing patient safety and quality care outcomes, evidence-based practice, and ethics. Specialty practice areas represented in the abstracts included workplace and domestic violence, heart failure, rapid response team, ventilator assisted pneumonia (VAP), central line infection, newborn sepsis, oncology, gerontology, and safety in handling medical bariatric patients. Collectively, these abstracts represent the breadth, depth, and richness of the CNS’s contribution to the well-being of the nursing profession, individuals, families, communities, and society. The conference abstracts are published so that we may share new knowledge with those who were unable to attend the conference. As you read each abstract, appreciate the talent and clinical scholarship of your CNS colleagues who are advancing the praxis of nursing and contributing to the health of society through improved outcomes for patients and healthcare organizations. We encourage you to contact individual presenters to network, collaborate, consult, or share your own thoughts and ideas on these topics. Watch for next year’s call for abstracts and consider submitting an abstract for presentation at NACNS’s next conference in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Westin Peachtree Plaza, March 5Y8, 2008.