News at a Glance (August 2016): UMSN Students Excel on Licensure Exams; Plus New Faculty Research Findings for Parkinson’s Disease and Critically Ill Patients

Excellent NCLEX

University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) students continue to achieve pass rates higher than the national average for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). The exam is a requirement to obtain a nursing license in the United States. In the latest term (January 1 – June 30, 2016), the national pass rate for BSN programs was 88.84%. UMSN graduates earned a pass rate of 96.19%. UMSN Associate Dean Bonnie Hagerty, PhD, RN, offers congratula­tions to the students and also says these scores reflect the high caliber of UMSN’s faculty and their efforts educating UMSN’s undergraduate students.

WHO Appointment

Research Findings

• The ABCDE Bundle 

  An effective strategy commonly used in caring for critically ill patients may not always be implemented as intended, according to new findings from Associate Professor Milisa Manojlovich, PhD, RN, CCRN, and colleagues. The Awakening and Breathing Coordination, Delirium assessment and Early exercise/mobility (ABCDE) bundle is used for minimizing sedative exposure, reducing duration of mechanical ventilation and managing delirium and weakness. The researchers examined the use of daily interruption of sedation (DIS) and early mobility. They found the two are often not adopted together, creating serious implications for the effectiveness of the ABCDE bundle. Dr. Manojlovich suggests strategies to increase proper implementation could be tailored to specific elements to show the importance of each step, with an emphasis on the strength of the bundle as a whole. In addition, the researchers say effective communication between healthcare providers is needed to ensure that all bundle elements are implemented, and in sequence. The findings are published in the Journal of Nursing Care Quality.

• Predicting Parkinson’s

  A new method for diagnosing, predicting and tracking Parkinson’s disease results in 96% consistency and accuracy according to new findings from UMSN Associate Professor Ivo D. Dinov, PhD, and colleagues. The machine-learning-based approach relies on multi-source Big Data including clinical, demographic, and genetics information, as well as derived neuroimaging biomarkers. According to the researchers, an added benefit of this predictive analytics approach is that when excluding the longitudinal clinical information used in the clinical diagnostic procedure, the accuracy of the decision support system still exceeds 80%. The same methods are now being employed to examine other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's.

Alumna in NY Times

UMSN alumna Margaret Zuccarini (BSN ’65) was featured in The New York Times for her role as a nursing publisher at Springer Publishing. She works to find new authors and books to publish, and contributes to the design and marketing of the book. Zuccarini spent years working in public health, critical care and emergency nursing before transitioning to publishing. 

Journey to Magnet Status

Nursing Editors