Healthy Work Environment Best Practice Guidelines on Professionalism and Diversity Now Available!!
Erica Kumar, Administrative Assistant
Healthy Work Enviroments Best Practice Guidelines
RNAO Centre for Professional Nursing Excellence
Healthy Work Environment Best Practice Guidelines on Professionalism and Diversity Now Available!!
The Healthy Work Environment Best Practice Guidelines Project continues to provide evidence based tools for nurses and other stakeholders to support their ongoing efforts to create healthy workplaces. We hear weekly about how both the Leadership and Collaborative Practice Guidelines are being used across all sectors in nursing with positive results.
The Professionalism in Nursing Guideline was released in March, 2007 at the Nursing Leadership Network Conference, and the Embracing Cultural Diversity in Health Care: Developing Cultural Competence Guideline was released at the RNAO Annual General Meeting, in April, 2007. Both of these guidelines can be accessed and ordered through the RNAO website.
The Professionalism of the Nurses Guideline identifies eight attributes of professionalism and provides specific evidence based strategies on how to incorporate each of the attributes into nursing practice. The Embracing Cultural Diversity in Health Care Guideline identifies cultural competent practices and outlines organizational values, relationships, structures and processes required for developing and sustaining workplaces that recognize and maximize the benefits of diversity.
At the recent Health Care Exposition held May 9, 2007 quick reference guides related to the final two guidelines in this series – Developing and Sustaining Effective Staffing and Workload Practices and Workplace Health, Safety and Well-being of the Nurse were shared with those in attendance. Both these guidelines are in final publication stage and will be released in June, 2007.
With the six initial guidelines near completion the HWE BPG Pilot Evaluation is taking on a greater focus in the program. The pilot is an independent third party research study spearheaded by Dr. Linda O´Brien-Pallas and Sara White. The ten Ontario healthcare sites (representing acute care, long-term care, mental health and community care clinical settings) that will be participating in this study include:
- The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,
- Headwaters Health Care Centre,
- Hotel Dieu Hospital,
- Kingston General Hospital,
- Queensway Carleton Hospital,
- Saint Elizabeth Health Care Centre,
- Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre,
- University Health Network,
- William Osler Health Centre, and
- York Central Hospital.
As a result of the project, both RNAO and the participating sites will have evidence on the validity of the guideline recommendations, effective strategies for implementing the guidelines, and how the implementation process can be strengthened.
The HWE BPG Program is continuing with further guideline development in areas in nursing where it is important for expert panels to use a systematic methodology to bring the best evidence to support decision making in management and education. Two new guidelines are being launched this year.
The first is directly related to the Workplace Health Safety and Well Being of the Nurse and will focus on preventing violence in the workplace. This guideline was launched in March, 2007 and is co-chaired by Margaret Keatings and Diana Meuller. The second guideline to be launched May 17 and 18, will address practice education in nursing and is co-chaired by Charlotte Nosegaard and Kirsten Krull–Naraj.
