Professional Practice
A PART OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE & CLINICAL IMPROVEMENT
The Practice Team includes Clinical Nurse Specialists, Nursing Professional Development Specialists, and Nurse Leaders who work collaboratively to ensure all nurses deliver safe and effective care based on evidence, for every patient, every time.
Clinical Practice Support
Our team of Clinical Nurse Specialists and Nursing Professional Development Specialists evaluate the interdisciplinary plan of care to ensure optimal patient outcomes, especially in patients with complex care needs, including those patients with:
- Complex diagnoses
- Extended length of stays
- At high risk for falls, infection, or pressure injuries
- New or infrequently encountered diagnoses, treatments or procedures
Professional Practice & Clinical
Improvement »
Overview
Professional Practice »
Ensuring nurses deliver safe & effective care
Specialty Practice »
Providing complex or high-risk patient care
Nursing Quality »
Safety and quality improvement initiatives
Stanford Center for Implementation and Evaluation of Nursing Care Evidence »
Alignment of evidence & clinical practice
These clinical experts also serve as change agents and innovators by encouraging a culture of inquiry and promoting quality improvement and research activities. They support staff through education, coaching, and mentoring using an evidence-based practice framework.
Clinical nurse specialists (CNSs) are registered nurses, who have graduate level nursing preparation at the master's or doctoral level as a CNS. They are clinical experts in evidence-based nursing practice within a specialty area, treating and managing the health concerns of patients and populations. The CNS specialty may be focused on individuals, populations, settings, type of care, type of problem, or diagnostic systems subspecialty. CNSs practice autonomously and integrate knowledge of disease and medical treatments into assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of patients' illnesses. These nurses design, implement, and evaluate both patient-specific and population-based programs of care.
CNSs provide leadership in advancing the practice of nursing to achieve quality and cost effective patient outcomes as well as provide leadership of multidisciplinary groups in designing and implementing innovative alternative solutions that address system problems and/or patient care issues. CNSs as direct care providers, perform comprehensive health assessments and develop differential diagnoses, CNSs serve as patient advocates, consultants, and researchers in various settings.
American Nurses Association. (2004). Nursing: Scope & standards of practice. Washington, DC: American Nurses Association, p. 15.
Diabetes
The Diabetes team supports staff and patients by providing patient instruction in diabetes management, continuing education for staff, and development of tools to facilitate expert quality care for our diabetic patients.
Age Friendly Care
We strive to provide care to older adult patients that reduces the risk of harm and is guided by the principles outlined in the IHI “4MS” framework.
- What Matters: Know and align care with each older adult’s specific health outcome goals and care preferences including, but not limited to, end-of-life care, and across settings of care.
- Medications: If medications are necessary, use age-friendly medications that do not interfere with What Matters, Mentation or Mobility.
- Mentation: Prevent, identify, treat and manage depression, dementia and delirium across settings of care.
- Mobility: Ensure that older adults move safely every day in order to maintain function and do What Matters.
Nursing Wellness and Resiliency
Improving the clinical work environment and supporting the well-being of our staff is essential work place safety and quality of patient care. The Clinical Practice Team provides resources for situational debriefing, wellness and resiliency activities.
Sepsis Program
The Clinical Practice Team supports an interdisciplinary and multipronged approach to preventing sepsis through infection prevention, patient education, early identification and rapid treatment of patients at risk. For additional information about sepsis visit Stanford Health Care Sepsis.