Academia and practice on the same page: Linking QI efforts to enhance outcomes

Rachel Dicker is a Product Management Associate at Wolters Kluwer, Health Learning, Research & Practice.  She is responsible for creating and implementing product strategies, innovation and market outreach for new clinical research, and information solutions.  Physicians, nurses, and medical researchers rely on Wolters Kluwer’s peer-reviewed content and workflow application solutions to identify evidence-based practice and translate that into quality improvements and research efforts to improve patient outcomes and staff engagement. Her current focus is building a new, innovative application for conducting, storing, and disseminating evidence-based and quality improvement initiatives.  She recently received the 2021 Health Learning, Research & Practice High Performance Recognition Award and the 2021 Wolters Kluwer Global Innovation Award.

Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, is Editor-in-Chief Emerita of the American Journal of Nursing, following 12 years at the helm of nursing’s legacy journal. As editor-in-chief, she’s spearheaded award-winning projects and series that have increased nurses’ awareness of important professional and social justice issues, enhanced teaching and use of evidence-based practices and research, and provided evidence for policy change. She’s received several awards for her editorial work, including the Margaret Comerford Freda Award for Editorial Leadership from the International Academy of Nursing Editors, The Nightingale Initiative for Global Health Advocacy in Action Award for excellence in promoting nursing scholarship, and several Clarion awards from the Association of Women in Communications.

Jane Barnsteiner, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Editor of Research and QI for the American Journal of Nursing, and Professor Emerita, University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing. Formerly, she was the Director of Nursing for Translational Research at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and served as Director of Nursing Practice and Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is one of the developers of the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) initiative and coeditor of Quality and Safety in Nursing, which has been translated into four languages. Dr. Barnsteiner was on the committee to update the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE 2.0) now used by scholarly publications for reporting QI projects. Recognized as an international leader in patient safety and quality improvement, she has received numerous awards for her work and was recently named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.

Shea E. Polancich, PhD, RN, FAAN, is an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing with a primary practice at the UAB Medical Center as a director specializing in nursing improvement, innovation, and analytics. Formerly, her roles included the Director for Quality and Patient Safety at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Director of Data Analysis and Measurement at Texas Health Resources, NIH/NINR Research Intern, and Health Policy Fellow at George Mason University. She is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She has served on expert panels for the National Quality Forum, and is a column editor for the Journal for Healthcare Quality®️.

Elaine Larson, PhD, RN, CIC, FAAN, is Professor Emerita, School of Nursing and Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University. She is a former dean of Georgetown University School of Nursing and is a Fellow in the National Academy of Medicine, Society for Healthcare Epidemiologists of America, Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, American Academy of Nursing, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Dr. Larson has been a member of the boards of directors for numerous infectious disease associations, and was the Chair of CDC’s Hospital Infection Control Advisory Committee (HICPAC). Her awards include the Pathfinder Award from the National Institute of Nursing Research, an International Nurse Researcher Award from Sigma Theta Tau, the John Stearns Medal for lifetime achievement in clinical practice from the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Walsh McDermott Medal from the National Academy of Medicine. She was Editor of the American Journal of Infection Control for 25 years (1995-2020) and is a prolific author on infection prevention, epidemiology, and clinical research. Dr. Larson currently chairs institutional review boards for Columbia University and the New York Academy of Medicine, and serves on the President's Advisory Committee to Combat Antibiotic Resistance, as well as President-Elect of the Certification Board for Infection Control.