Advocate Children’s Hospital—Oak Lawn is 146 bed pediatric hospital with a 22-bed pediatric emergency department (PED) located in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn, IL. Advocate Children’s Hospital—Oak Lawn is part of the larger Advocate Health system which spans 5 states. The pediatric emergency department treats patients ranging from birth through 18 years of age and sees an average of 36,000 patients per year.
Advocate Children’s hospital is a Magnet-designated hospital which strives to help children live fully. Pediatric emergency department nurse-driven pathways help us achieve this goal by empowering nurses to initiate treatment for various patient populations to ensure timely, quality care. The PED SANE program is a robust program offering 24/7 coverage with 13 pediatric SANE-trained RNs. The PED also boasts a pediatric stroke program to expedite care for potential stroke patients. The PED Performance Improvement committee is a nurse-led committee with the purpose of monitoring and improving initiatives to ensure best practices are sustained.
The PED not only focuses on helping patients live fully, but also the teammates working within the organization. Staff led self-care tips, shared governance engagement, and team building activities are a few strategies utilized to promote the importance of caring for oneself in order to care for others. The well-being strategies have proven to be effective as evidenced by low turnover rate, teammate engagement in the organization’s recognition platform, and successful completion of the Children’s Hospital workplace violence reduction program. Extraordinary interdisciplinary collaboration with the common goal to put patient first also boosts exceptional care and teammate satisfaction.
By receiving this award, it is has solidified the acknowledgement of all these amazing accomplishments mentioned. We are extremely proud of our team and the impact they make on the children in the community we serve.
Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital’s Level 1 Trauma Center was recently awarded its second Lantern Award from the Emergency Nurses Association’s for demonstrating excellence in emergency care.
“This award highlights the commitment and compassion of our Emergency Department nurses and all ED teammates who care for our patients every day,” said Roseanne Niese chief nursing officer at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital. “We are honored to receive this recognition and will continue to serve our patients – often as their front-door to care at our hospital.”
The Lantern Award is awarded for three years to hospitals whose emergency department teammates incorporate evidence-based practice and innovation into their care. The award serves as a symbol of a commitment to excellent, highly-skilled emergency care.
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital’s Adult ED is a 41-bed Adult Emergency Department, seeing over 63,000 visits in 2023. We are a Level I Trauma Center, a Comprehensive Stroke Center, and a Sexual Assault Treatment Center for adults and adolescents. We are proud to have had an integral part in the hospital achieving a fifth Magnet designation from ANCC in May of this year.
We are honored and humbled by the receiving of a Lantern Award this year recognizing the hard re-build work that the entire department has accomplished in this post-pandemic environment. The Adult ED has shown more than resilience, but innovation and true grit in redefining the delivery of emergency care. Our outcomes in nursing turnover, nursing engagement, improved throughput, and workplace safety are just a few of the highlights in our Lantern application. Achieving these outcomes, even in the face of high volume, high acuity and complexity of patients, and high inpatient boarding is a testament to the strength and determination of the staff in the Adult Emergency Department to have a positive impact on the community we serve.
Northwestern Medicine Delnor Emergency Department shaped the future and specialty of emergency nursing by creating a standardized charge nurse leadership development program. This program consists of operational skill development, including staff scheduling, payroll, productivity, orientation and onboarding. The program also addresses relational skills development including emotional intelligence, communication styles, and hosting difficult conversations through simulation utilizing standardized actors. The implementation of the standardized charge nurse leadership development program resulted in improved leader confidence and streamlined operations with a noted 83% reduction in voluntary resignations.
The implementation of a standardized process proactively identifying hospital resources by an interprofessional team with a focus on capacity, coordination, and communication improved hospital throughput efficiency between the emergency department (ED) and inpatient units. This innovation demonstrates the hospital's commitment to prioritizing ED daily volume activity and decreasing patient length of stay. An electronic tool was created to review current and projected hospital capacity, surgical admissions, ED volume activity and projected daily volume, EMS arrivals, and inpatients boarding in the ED. This process allows the hospital to project the need for and acquire resources to support care delivery by decompressing the ED, identifying appropriate bed placement, and staffing needs across all nursing departments. This ED led initiative also noted an 8% decrease in inpatient boarding hours.
The McHenry Emergency Department is incredibly proud to be a two-time recipient of the ENA Lantern award and Woodstock Emergency Department is a first time ENA Lantern award winner. As one of the nurses who assisted with the application stated “I wholeheartedly believe the grass is greener where you water it.” The McHenry and Woodstock ED teams are planting seeds of the future for patient care and the future of professional nursing practice. This team is invested in improving care for any complaint that enters its doors. From the minor to the most critically ill, both team’s passion for excellence, advocacy, and patient safety shines through. The hard work that these teams demonstrate on a daily basis is admirable. They provide the most excellent care and experience to our patients while in our department.
The Comer Pediatric Emergency Department (ED) attributes its ongoing success to a robust quality improvement program and strong collaboration between unit-based councils and frontline ED nursing staff committees. These groups work together to promote a culture of continuous improvement and excellent patient care. Central to this process is the ED Quality Committee, comprised of leadership and frontline representatives, including a quality improvement nurse. This committee monitors key performance indicators to identify improvement areas, fostering better patient outcomes and higher staff satisfaction.
The ED's quality improvement program is supported by four essential pillars. The first pillar is an optimized data collection and review process. This pillar has been refined over the past two years to ensure timely identification of care gaps. Key quality indicators, like sepsis and asthma cases, are tracked through a REDCap dashboard, which consolidates audit data for efficient trend analysis. The system automatically notifies leadership of certain audit results, enabling quick feedback. Data collection is peer-led, with the quality nurse providing prompt, non-punitive feedback to colleagues, ensuring a culture of support and learning.
The second pillar involves the safety event reporting process. Staff are encouraged to use a secure system for reporting near-miss and actual events. Leadership initially reviews events using a Just Culture approach, sending non-punitive events to a peer-led committee for further evaluation. This team, led by the quality nurse, provides tailored feedback and education to staff, ensuring individual learning and department-wide quality improvements.
The third pillar is a formal debrief process. Structured debriefs follow significant events, such as resuscitations or trauma cases, and any requested by staff. These debriefs offer a supportive, non-punitive environment for discussing patient care and identifying improvement areas. This process has proven invaluable for education, peer support, and the continuous advancement of care standards.
The fourth pillar consists of focused quality improvement groups that address specific high-risk or priority areas, such as sepsis, falls, and sedation. These groups, led by frontline staff, collaborate with key stakeholders to determine best practices, create action plans, and ensure long-term improvements in patient care.
Together, these four pillars form an integrated, peer-driven quality improvement framework that sustains high standards and innovation within the ED, fostering a safer and more effective environment for both patients and staff.