Nurse Leaders as Disruptive Innovators in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Competency

Improving the rate of survival among the 209,000 patients with an in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) each year in the United States 1 depends on the provision of high quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Leading health care advisories, such as those of the Institute of Medicine 2 and the American Heart Association (AHA), 3 suggest that the current survival rate of 22.3% from IHCA 4 can be improved through organization- and systems-level continuous quality improvement initiatives. As a result of the high number of arrests with low survival rates and new initiatives focusing on continuous improvement, likely cardiac arrest and the provision of high quality CPR will be a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid core measure.