Nursing

Mission

We are committed to providing the highest quality care in a compassionate, family-centered environment that optimizes the health journey of our patients, families, and communities.

Vision

We will be leaders, clinical experts and advocates who are empowered to transform nursing practice through clinical inquiry, collaboration, and meaningful connections. The professional practice environment will embrace a welcoming culture, professional development and well-being.

Nursing Continuing Professional Development

Akron Children’s is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. This designation demonstrates our commitment to delivering high-quality, evidence-based educational activities that support the professional growth and lifelong learning of registered nurses. Through this accreditation, we ensure that our continuing education offerings meet rigorous standards for planning, implementation, and evaluation set forth by the ANCC.

Nursing Career Path

The Akron Children’s Nursing Career Path is a structured system used to recognize and reward nursing professional development, expertise and achievement. This program offers two pathways – one for clinical nurses who provide direct care to patients and one for specialty nurse professionals who support nursing programs and provide indirect care. Path placement is based on education, years of experience, and continued competency and contributions in four major areas: technical expertise, leadership, committee involvement and scholarly activities (research, evidence-based practice and quality improvement).  Each level achieved has associated benefits provided to participating registered nurses.

Akron Children’s is committed to providing nurses with a supportive and educational environment throughout their transition from student to professional. 

Akron Children's Nurse Residency Program is accredited with distinction as a Practice Transition Program by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation in Practice Transition Programs. We received this recognition in 2018 and 2021 and in 2025 achieved our third Accreditation with Distinction.

The one-year residency program assists new nurses in gaining the skills and confidence needed as they transition to becoming competent professional nurses in a clinical environment. Each nurse resident is provided with a preceptor for clinical support through orientation, a facilitator and peer support group to ease the transition to the nurse’s new role, structured educational experiences designed to develop competence in nursing practice, simulation experiences and support in incorporating research-based evidence linked to outcomes in practice. New nurse resident cohorts begin on a bi-monthly basis, with approximately 150 nurse residents beginning the program annually.

Center for Nursing Research

The work of nurses is essential for effective, efficient and quality health care. Nurses have high patient visibility and communicate regularly with Akron Children's interdisciplinary staff and administrative team. Trained to make detailed observations, nurses can be exceptional researchers.

At Akron Children's Rebecca D. Considine Research Institute, our commitment to nursing research creates opportunities to improve family-centered care through advances in nursing clinical practice, administration and education.

The breadth and scope of nursing science are wide-ranging, encompassing topics from patient care and safety to nursing productivity. By evaluating promising new patient care strategies and methods, nursing research contributes to compassionate care — easing the emotional burden of children and families coping with serious, sometimes painful, life-threatening medical conditions.

Our pursuit of nursing excellence through research also generates “best practice” patient care models that enhance the practice of nursing nationally.

Evidence-Based Practice

At Akron Children’s, we believe in the power of evidence-based practice to take our nursing care to new levels of excellence. Evidence-based practice inspires outstanding clinical outcomes by fostering innovative thinking and creative problem-solving to transform practice initiatives into clinical realities. This leads to improved outcomes on nurse-sensitive indicators, better patient experiences, and more cost-effective care.  

Evidence-based practice is a problem-solving approach to clinical care that incorporates the best evidence from well-designed research studies, the expertise of clinicians, and the values and preferences of patients when making decisions about care.

It includes a critical assessment of relevant research studies and the review of available literature to identify best practices. It includes the cumulative experience, education and practice skills of our clinicians, and it integrates patient values and preferences to promote individualized care.

At Akron Children’s, we foster the professional development and clinical skill-building of our nurses by supporting them in the implementation of evidence-based practice and research. By promoting problem-solving and discovery, we’re helping our nurses transform the delivery of pediatric nursing care within our hospital walls and beyond.

Beyond the Bedside: Shared Professional Governance

Akron Children's supports decentralized decision-making, shared ownership, accountability and partnerships between key stakeholders with the goal of improving patient care. Our shared professional governance structure provides a forum for our nurses to participate in the decisions that affect their work. Nurses with all levels of experience are encouraged to participate on one of our eight shared professional governance councils, as well as their unit-based councils.

Unit-Based Councils

Unit-Based Councils (UBCs) provide a forum for shared decision-making between unit nursing staff and management to promote evidence-based nursing, clinical excellence and optimal patient care outcomes.

UBCs are rooted in the premise that direct-care nurses have the best insight into solutions for unit-level clinical practice, quality and performance improvement, research, professional development, and issues surrounding unit culture and work environment.
       

Professional Development

The Professional Development Council defines, implements, evaluates and improves initiatives that promote professional development and staff satisfaction, including: Supports education initiatives, provides education and promotes individual responsibility and accountability for education and professional growth.

Interdisciplinary Integrated Informatics (III)

The Integrated Interdisciplinary Informatics Council identifies issues and leads workflow analysis and improvement in the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of effective, innovative information technologies across clinical, administrative, educational, and/or research domains of practice. The Council provides a venue for communication, networking, and education of clinicians across the organization for improvements in and optimization of the use of the electronic medical record system.

Clinical Practice

The Clinical Practice Council identifies, implements, and utilizes established standards of care and best practices to empower clinicians to provide care that is evidence-based and family-centered, as part of a multidisciplinary team.

Quality

The Quality Council promotes an environment of continuous improvement in the quality of patient care, evidence-based practice and research. As a part of a multi-disciplinary team, it assesses and ensures compliance with established standards of care and practice.

Research

The Research Council promotes an environment of inquiry through education, conduct, application and dissemination of research. The Council facilitates internal and external connections, linkages and recognition to enhance professional and multidisciplinary collaborations.

Advanced Practice Provider Council

The Advance Professional Practice (APP) Council is comprised of APRN and PA providers, from across the organization, which represent the various areas of primary care, specialty, and acute care practice The Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Council reviews standards and practice related issues for the APRN and PA medical staff at Akron Children’s.
 

Ambulatory

The Ambulatory Council provides a forum for shared decision making to promote clinical excellence and optimal patient outcomes. The council will work to ensure that all practice and patient care decisions are consistent with evidence-based practice and professional standards. The council may address clinical practice, quality improvement, research, professional development culture and work environment issues.

Leadership

The Leadership Council promotes nursing excellence through transformational leadership.

Advanced Practice Center

Our Advanced Practice Center supports advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants at Akron Children’s by providing expert resources in onboarding, orientation, practice, licensing, compliance, credentialing, privileging, continuing education and training.