From the Health Sciences VP

In my position as CEO of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC), I have a special perspective on the advances in nursing that our faculty and students make every day. The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing is a key component of WHSC, along with the schools of public health and medicine, a primate research center, Winship Cancer Institute, and Emory Healthcare. Together these entities integrate our missions of teaching, research, and practice—all with the end goal of bettering the health of people and communities.

The best healing takes place when talented people intersect with cutting-edge science and technology and each other to improve care and systems of care. A few years ago, Bryan Castle and Jason Stein, a nurse and physician at Emory University Hospital, thought of a better way to deliver patient care. The result is the Accountable Care Unit (ACU), an interdisciplinary model that involves patients and families in planning their care. The ACU model has proven to be an effective way to reduce length of stay for patients. Susan Shapiro, who holds a joint appointment in the School of Nursing and Emory Healthcare, helped secure a federal award to add more ACUs throughout our health system and train more staff nurses to lead these interdisciplinary teams.

In this issue of Emory Nursing, you’ll read more about the many innovations being pioneered by our nursing faculty and staff. Their talent for creating new technologies and using existing technologies in new ways is driven by a passion for continually improving the care experience for all the people we serve.

Thanks, as always, to the many friends and supporters who help make their exciting work possible.

S. Wright Caughman MD
Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, Emory University
CEO, Woodruff Health Sciences Center
Chairman, Emory Healthcare