ACE.S: Advancing Care Excellence for Seniors Click on cover to read or download a PDF of the report.

Meet Millie Larsen.

Millie is an 84-year-old Caucasian female who lives alone in a small house. Her husband, Harold, died a year ago.

Here, Millie reveals a bit about herself:

I went to the doctor last week to get my blood pressure and cholesterol checked. He wants to start me on a new pill for cholesterol. I already take about six or eight pills every day. I hope this new pill isn’t too expensive. I already have to pay a lot for my medications and I don’t get the pension anymore since Harold died.

Millie shares a number of characteristics common among older Americans; she, therefore, serves as a natural teaching tool, an unfolding case—one that evolves over time in a manner that is unpredictable to a nursing student or other learner—for the National League for Nursing’s ACE.S (Advancing Care Excellence for Seniors) project. Millie Larsen (who is a composite character) is one among many reality-based unfolding cases available as part of the wealth of ACE.S teaching tools.

The John A. Hartford Foundation just released a report showcasing the ACE.S project, which aims to advance the care of older adults through innovations in nursing education. Take a look.

Elaine Tagliareni EdD, RN, CNE, FAAN, leads an ACE.S training session in Philadelphia in 2010. Elaine Tagliareni EdD, RN, CNE, FAAN, leads an ACE.S training session in Philadelphia in 2010.

In the report, you will learn that ACE.S was the first national effort to prepare students in all pre-licensure nursing programs, including associate degree, to deliver high-quality care to older adults. The original Hartford grant, Fostering Geriatrics in Associate Degree Nursing Education (2007-09), led to a second grant, known as ACE.S, which we supported from 2009 to 2012. The National League for Nursing (NLN) and Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) led ACE.S, under the direction of Elaine Tagliareni, EdD, RN, CNE, FAAN, who was both president of the NLN and a professor of nursing at CCP at that time, and is now the NLN’s Chief Program Officer .

Together with our partners the Independence Foundation, Laerdal Medical, and later Independence Blue Cross Foundation, the Hearst Foundations, and the MetLife Foundation, ACE.S provided new educational opportunities, teaching tools, and other resources to help pre-licensure nursing faculty offer geriatric content to their students.

ACES_meeting2_400p Nursing faculty take part in ACE.S training in Philadelphia in 2010.

This is key: As the largest group of health professionals, nurses are essential to ensuring the delivery of high-quality care, particularly to older adults like Millie, whose medical complexity and self-care needs may go unmet but are a natural fit for nurses’ unique skills. Yet, essential geriatric principles have often been under-represented in nursing curricula. This is despite the fact that the demographic imperative for providing geriatrics content in nursing curriculum is greater than ever with 10,000 people turning 65 every day.

To address this, when Hartford’s funding for ACE.S drew to a close, the Hearst Foundations stepped in with major support for a dissemination phase, with the result that ACE.S was introduced to over 8,000 nursing faculty during the project period through workshops, webinars, and the NLN website. (See also Amy Berman’s Health AGEnda blog post about this from 2013.)

I hope you will read the report, but allow me to share a few things that distinguish ACE.S.

First, its scope. While Hartford funding in curriculum and educational models most often occurred at the graduate level, ACE.S focused on pre-licensure nursing education (baccalaureate or the associate degree level). Since almost 60 percent of all Registered Nurses (including half of all nurses working in nursing homes or extended-care facilities) receive their initial nursing education in associate degree programs, this was a large and important cohort of nursing students to reach.

Second, its user-friendliness. As noted, the NLN ACE.S initiative created Millie and other interactive multimedia case studies (the ACE.S Unfolding Cases) and simulations, as well as classroom-ready teaching tools and strategies with a geriatric nursing focus. These are free, ready to use, designed with a realistic appreciation of the difficulty of adding new material to any curriculum, and are highly adaptable to any teaching environment.

Third, its ability to grow in interesting ways. After the Hartford grant ended, other funding partners began to take the program in new directions, such as three unfolding cases focused on Alzheimer’s disease care, funded by the MetLife Foundation. One of the original partners, Laerdal Medical, provided further funding to develop Advancing Care Excellence for Veterans (ACE.V). The NLN is now actively seeking funding for additional unfolding cases to advance care of other vulnerable populations, based on the NLN ACE.S Framework. Funding from the Hearst grant is also supporting numerous new digital marketing efforts, including a Twitter chat series, more free ACE.S webinars, a series of four promotional and educational videos, and a multi-author blog.

Perhaps most importantly, the interactive and patient-centered nature of the ACE.S teaching tools helps nursing students empathize with older adults and develop a positive view of aging. As one student reported in an ACE.S evaluation: “Overall, I believe I am a better nurse because of your efforts to integrate these simulation scenarios into our curriculum.”

And being a better nurse means providing better care for the many Millies out there.