ESSENTIAL II

e-Portfolio Essential II: Basic organizational and systems leadership for quality care
and patient safety
Laura Ellis
Frostburg State University

ESSENTIAL II

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing provides specific qualifications

for nurses seeking a bachelors level competency in nursing practice. The AACN has nine
essential requirements of a professional nurse including number nine; Baccalaureate
Generalist Nursing Practice. The focus of Essential II is that baccalaureate nurses utilize
leadership skills to advance quality improvement and safety in their everyday practice.
The baccalaureate prepared nurse is able to survey their working environment for quality
and safety issues, investigate proper approach and evidence based practice for change,
and implement changes through leading peers and patients. (2008, p. 13).
Exemplar
The selected exemplar represents leadership in quality care and patient safety.
This exemplar describes a nurse who is active in assessing care quality and patient safety
needs on an intensive care unit and serves as the leader of a committee, which focuses on
improving both patient safety and care quality through active investigation, education,
and intervention. This exemplar is reflective of what the AACN states is a baccalaureate
prepared nurse.
Reflection
The selected assignment demonstrates leadership ability via a chair position on an
ICU CUSP team. CUSP teams, originally developed by the Armstrong Institute of Patient
Safety and Quality of Johns Hopkins Medicine, are designed to target a wide variety of

ESSENTIAL II
issues on a nursing care unit that require intervention and change. This particular

exemplar uses central line blood stream infections as an area of concern and outlines how
the baccalaureate prepared nurse would approach fixing the problem of increasing central
line blood stream infections on an intensive care unit. This exemplar clearly demonstrates
the ability to assist in the development of quality improvement action plans and
demonstrates ability to recognize safety and quality concerns and apply evidence based
knowledge to create change (2008, p. 13).

A culture of safety is developed through steady changes of unsafe behaviors such

as poor communication, breaches in protocol, and disregard for current evidence based
practice. This exemplar clearly shows the ability of a baccalaureate prepared nurse to lead
by example and participate in the development and implementation of imaginative and
creative strategies to enable systems to change as the CUSP team leader on an Intensive
Care Unit (2008, p. 14).

ESSENTIAL II

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Reference

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). (2008). The essentials of

baccalaureate education for professional nursing practice. Retrieved November
13, 2016, from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/educationresources/BaccEssentials08.pdf