Florida Tomorrow is a belief...
that new professional nursing roles will save lives.
Patients’ Liaison
In the increasingly complicated world of patient care, a typical
hospital stay might include visits from several physicians and a team of nurses, along with input from specialists, nutritionists,
social workers, pharmacists and nursing administrators. For patients, the bevy of faces and technologies can be bewildering.
Amanda Brown, a graduate of UF’s Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) graduate program, coordinates the array of resources to ensure the best outcome for each patient.
“Clinical nurse leaders were a missing piece in patient care,” says Brown, who secured a job at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville before graduating. “There are so many technologies and services available to patients now, and the CNL will integrate care from all of those resources.”
Clinical nurse leaders personalize and coordinate that care.
“Every patient I care for as a CNL will see me every day. They and their families will know I am their point person in the maze of hospital personnel,” Brown explains.
The health care crisis gripping the nation involves a set of complexities, and the nursing shortage is a key component. Even so, a growing number of studies demonstrate that yesterday’s approaches to delivering care won’t provide long-term solutions. To create a new kind of nursing professional — one trained to coordinate, manage and evaluate patient care — UF’s College of Nursing is one of the first schools to pilot the CNL program. Its first class, which included Brown and five others, graduated in 2007.
The clinical nurse leader role requires a clear link between practice and education. UF partners with Shands at UF, Shands AGH, Shands Jacksonville, Malcom Randall VA Medical Center, Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville.
“We were excited to be working with the University of Florida, especially on the CNL program,” says Carolyn Johnson, Wolfson’s chief nursing officer. “At the acute care hospital level, we found deficits existed — much of the master’s-level education had moved to specialized primary care NP roles, and that caused graduates with master’s degrees to leave hospital-based practice. The CNL fills the gap for master’s-prepared generalist nurses focused on direct care for hospitalized patients.”
The program has been so favorable that at Wolfson, leaders envision placing a clinical nurse leader on every surgical floor.
