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Kathleen McCauley , RN, PhD, FAAN, is the newly elected president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN). During her yearlong term, she plans to travel around the country and encourage AACN members to “Live Their Contribution,” the theme she has adopted for her presidency. McCauley explained her theme and shared AACN’s vision in a recent interview with Nursing Spectrum, which publishes NurseWeek.
You are an associate professor of cardiovascular nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. You’re doing research on improved outcomes for patients who receive an advanced practice nurse intervention before discharge. You are a clinical nurse specialist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). And now you’re AACN president. How do you manage all of your roles?
You can’t become president of AACN without having serious conversations with your superiors at your day job. I needed to speak with the dean at the nursing school, my division chair, and my CNO at the hospital. From every one of them, I heard, “You go. This is fabulous.”
I’ve been given a tremendous amount of support from the school of nursing, so I can still teach and cochair the Curriculum Committee. Victoria Rich, RN, PhD, chief nursing officer at HUP, has been supportive in helping me think about how to be most effective in the time that I can give to my clinical role. AACN has an experienced staff that has been a wonderful support to me. I don’t think my husband realizes yet just how much I’ll be away, though.
What’s it like being the president of an organization that represents 65,000 critical care and progressive care nurses?
It’s wonderful. I was recently invited to speak to the Kerry-Edwards campaign in Washington, D.C. They wanted to hear from us. It was wonderful to have that voice. I know that I would not have been personally invited had I not been president of AACN. Because we are such a strong organization, I felt well-prepared to speak to what our members would say if they were in the room. I’ve been given a great opportunity to speak on behalf of AACN.
What is at the core of AACN?
It’s a big organization, and it’s a strong one. Several years ago, AACN had the potential for being pulled in too many directions and spread too thin. We made the decision then that AACN was going to be invested in the education of its members — and that’s always what we’re going to be about. We invest our energy in making sure that we have the best products and educational programs available to our members. We’ve developed the Electronic Critical Care Orientation (ECCO) program and are working on an electronic basic dysrhythmia course as well.
We know the way of the future is not to educate nurses the way I taught nurses in the critical care course at my hospital: Standing up five afternoons a week in ECG courses saying, “This is a P-wave.” The new generation of nurses learns well at their own pace using computer animation. We want to make sure we’re ahead of the education curve. But beyond education, we know our members need us to be a voice for them. They have told us that our focus on staffing, healthy work environments, and end-of-life care are right on target.
Staffing and ratios are huge issues, organizationally and legislatively. What is AACN’s position?
We’ve done a lot of thinking about new models, better collaboration with other team members, better use of support staff, and better use of technology. That’s all tied into how to use staff effectively and how to be a voice against mandatory overtime. Our feeling about ratios is that it is a limited view of the problem.
Ratios do not take into consideration the needs of the patient or the expertise of the nurse. AACN proposes a much higher-level model of matching patient needs with nurse competencies. It’s called the Synergy Model, and it’s much more intellectually congruent with what patients really need. (See “AACN Model Creates Synergy” [www.aacn.org])
The theme of your presidency is “Live Your Contribution.” How do you see members implementing this theme?
I knew that I wanted this to be my theme when I was president-elect. My theme involves being passionate about the contribution you make. It’s looking for opportunities to be engaged, to not be passive, to not be a punch-the-time-clock type of person, but instead to ask, “How am I going to make a contribution?”
Nurses should ask themselves: “Because I was there today, what happened? What was different that, had it been my day off, my patients and families would not have received? What was my individual contribution?”
The feedback I’ve received on the theme has been strong. It’s time for this theme. People are ready for it, and they’re excited about it.
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