Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL): A Case Study

A clinical nurse leader (CNL) provides leadership at the clinical level by evaluating, coordinating delegating and implementing the care a healthcare team provides to a patient and can also actively participate in the care of that patient when called for (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2017). AACN proposed and developed this role with the hope of improving healthcare outcomes and increasing the quality of care. CNLs thrive and focus on an interdisciplinary, teamwork-type of methodology in their primary goal of designing, delegating and implementing the most effective care across various clinical settings. With these outlined responsibilities, CNLs need to be articulate and effective in communicating while collaborating with other experts, health care …show more content…
CNLs “review each patient’s record to ensure that the correct protocols, based on the patient diagnosis and clinical status are being followed” (Sheets et al., 2012, p. 55). When risks are identified, a CNL would promptly put the health care team into action to prevent any sentinel events from occurring. For example, in preventing incidence of falls, a CNL may work on having physical therapy evaluate patients ASAP and also mandate regular and schedule timed rounding on any patient identified as a fall risk. Preventing these types of sentinel events will reduce length of stay in a unit or hospital. In addition to implementing action items, CNLs can also provide education to staff on new techniques and interventions in prevention of falls. In 2010-2015, the roles of the CNLs were directly attributed to the role of CNLs played in improving nurse-sensitive indicators such as; incidence of patient falls, incidence of pressure ulcers and invasive line-acquired infections (Sotomayor & Rankin,