Ace Star Model In Nursing

Introduction In recent months, one of the rural hospitals in the local community has had a staffing shortage involving nurses on one of their inpatient units. This shortage was evidenced by the hospital having to close rooms on the inpatient unit during peak patient volume times, which creates an overflow situation for the emergency department, which in turn affects patient care and outcomes. The hospital has designated a change agent to employ creative solutions to staff the inpatient unit safely and to grid when possible. Some of these alternate measures include closing rooms, utilizing float pool nurses, utilizing agency or travel nurses, and the creation of a weekend only position. Some of these practices are not financially beneficial

The ACE Star Model “was developed to offer a simple yet comprehensive approach to translate evidence into practice” (Stevens, 2013). I found this model to be most helpful in finding applicable evidence based research, because the model “explains how various stages of knowledge transformation reduce the volume of scientific literature and provide forms of knowledge that can be directly incorporated in care and decision making” (Stevens, 2013). An important aspect of this model is the evidence summary, which takes the large quantities of information from multiple sources and synthesizes it into generalized, unbiased, information that can be formulated into solutions for the units nursing shortage. This evidence summary would be the first step in gaining “buy in” from the unit’s current full time employees, and the hospital executives, for those initiatives or solutions that are proposed by the change

The profession of nursing is ever expanding and growing. The particular unit that has been the focus of this discussion is a medical surgical unit, and as nurses gain experience they may transition, get promoted, specialize, or take on a completely new role and leave the unit, thus leaving a vacancy. Keeping this in mind, one would measure whether or not the interventions offered, such as the weekend only option, is filled and being utilized. The hospital would keep track if the education assistance, the career progression or ladder program, and the mentor and/or preceptor programs were being utilized and successfully advancing nurses within their health system. Even though these long-term solutions would eventually assist in creating turn-over on the studied unit, they would in turn still draw new nurses to apply to that unit. Along with the education and career progression programs, some unit environment issues were address, and would also need to be measured for their success. These solutions could be measured by an employee pulse survey that would show the satisfaction and trends of the employees over time, and adjustments to the solutions could be made in real