Our Commitment to Your Success

Nurses are reimbursed for the successful awarding of a specialty certification. Certification review classes are offered at no cost to Cleveland Clinic nurses in the following specialties.

• Critical Care Nursing
• Progressive Critical Care Nursing
• Emergency Nursing
• Pediatrics
• Hematology/Oncology
• Palliative Care
• Hospice Care
• Medical Surgical Nursing
• Geriatric Nursing
• Neuroscience Nursing

Our state of the art nursing learning center is designed to replicate the practice settings of the basic medical, surgical, intensive care, operating room, pediatric and maternity units. The learning center features advanced human patient simulators, mobile bedside computers with access to electronic clinical documentation and the internet, as well as digitalized video and event debriefing printouts. This technology allows nurses to integrate skills, decision making and critical thinking in a safe and controlled environment.

With the fast paced, high demand health care environment of today, Cleveland Clinic Nursing Simulation has recognized the need to reach out to the practice arena and take education to the bedside nurse. Full Mission, High Fidelity Simulation is taken to the nursing units for “real time” training, allowing for this valuable experiential learning to occur spontaneously, capturing the teachable moments and larger audience.

The Zielony Nursing Institute makes every effort to continue nursing education, while allowing nurses to continue providing world-class care. In order to maintain this flexibility, we provide distance learning, where nurses can join in training no matter their location. Distance learning is a great resource, reducing travel and other expenses while opening limitless opportunities.

The Zielony Nursing Institute strives to make information readily available to its nurses. The electronic resource library is an excellent clinical resource for best practices, journal articles, technical skills and more. With these resources at hand, Cleveland Clinic nurses can learn and adapt as necessary in their quest to provide exemplary patient care.

Cleveland Clinic is a participating member of NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Healthsystem Elders), a national initiative funded by the John A. Hartford foundation. NICHE utilizes hospital-based assessments of geriatric nursing strengths and weaknesses, focuses on preventing and managing common geriatric syndromes, and offers effective models of geriatric nursing care.

The Geriatric Resource Nurse Model of care is utilized on most adult inpatient units. The program focuses on building the knowledge and skill levels of staff nurses to assess, detect, prevent and/or manage common geriatric nursing care problems that occur across all specialties. These include decreased physical function, incontinence, delirium, nutrition, skin care, and discharge needs. The program uses a combination of regular didactic workshops and ongoing one-on-one nurse specialist to staff nurse consultation for specific patient care issues.

Over 100 staff nurses have been trained as geriatric resources nurses (GRN) beginning in 2001. The GRN group meets monthly for educational sessions. GRNs are involved in unit specific performance improvement projects and research projects such as increasing ambulation, recognizing delirium and reducing use of indwelling urinary catheters.

METI eDose® is a web-based medication assessment that simulates the medication calculation and administration process. METI eDose® is currently utilized to test all newly hired nurses at Cleveland Clinic and evaluate their existing critical thinking skills in all aspects of the medication administration process. It is designed to identity areas for development so that targeted education can be provided for the new nurse. This helps protect the patients we proudly serve and ensures we deliver on the promise of world-class care.

Cleveland Clinic nurses have great opportunities to further develop their leadership skill set. Nurse Leader Academy, which occurs once in the fall and once in the spring, involves nurses in cohort groups of 20-24 members. Leaders selected to attend will complete a project at the conclusion of the session as well as receive individual assessments for both strength and development.

All Cleveland Clinic nurses are welcomed through New Employee Orientation on day one and a centralized Nursing Orientation on day two. The goal of nursing orientation is to provide each new nurse with the clinical, regulatory, electronic health record and skills education and training needed to begin building both confidence and competency. Orientation continues on the nursing unit where each new nurse is paired with a coach who will help each nurse build critical thinking, interpersonal and technical skills during the orientation time period. Professional development does not stop with orientation. Cleveland Clinic offers a variety of specialty courses and inservices to foster continual growth.

The Performance Based Development System (PBDS)®, implemented in July 2010, is a web-based program utilized assess critical thinking skills and interpersonal skills so that an individualized orientation process can be developed, based on the results of the assessment, for each newly hired nurse. The PBDS assessment evaluates the nurses ability to recognize a patient problem and its level of urgency based and then identify the action steps needed to manage the patient problem. One-on-one feedback is provided on the assessment findings and an individual action plan is developed for each new nurse to guide their unit orientation. Weeks of orientation are recommended based on the assessment results as well. Developing the critical thinking of new nurses helps ensure excellent patient care is consistently provided.