Thanks to online education and resources, nurses can practice critical thinking and clinical judgment skills in a safe, realistic virtual hospital environment.
Julie Miller, B.S.N., RN, CCRN-K
Clinical Practice Specialist, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)
Linda Bell, M.S.N., RN
Clinical Practice Specialist, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)
Imagine arriving at work and suddenly needing to perform tasks you haven’t been taught to do before. This is the current reality in the world of nursing.
With continuing surges in patients who have COVID-19, the healthcare system is facing a worsening shortage of nurses and an ever-widening gap between nursing experience and patients’ complexity. Nurses who are unfamiliar with the critical care environment are being brought into intensive care units to help care for the overwhelming number of patients. As a result, it is imperative to have safe, efficient, and virtual continuing education to meet the learning needs of nurses.
Hospitals and nurses need relevant, up-to-date online education to help upskill competencies in order to safely provide care for acutely and critically ill patients. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) has helped meet this need with an array of online COVID-19-related educational resources, made available to all nurses for free. These resources add to AACN’s portfolio of continuing education opportunities that support the learning needs of nurses who are new to or experienced in progressive and critical care.
Thanks to the growing number of online nursing education and resources, such as those offered by AACN, nurses can practice their critical-thinking and clinical-judgment skills in a safe, realistic virtual hospital environment, where they can practice assessing patients and make medical decisions through interactive, case-based scenarios.
AACN is the largest specialty nursing organization in the world, with more than 130,000 members, and a leading provider of continuing education for nurses and other healthcare providers. Learn more about AACN by visiting www.aacn.org.
