JU College of Health Sciences wins $44,883 Florida Blue grant for nursing safety training

Jacksonville University has been awarded $44,883 by The Florida Blue Foundation to help develop training modules that will help nurses improve the quality and safety of the health care systems in which they work.

The three-year project, which began Jan. 1, is titled “A Statewide Initiative Integrating Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Through Academic/Clinical Partnerships to Improve Health Outcomes,” said Renee Rossi, Director of Grant Development at JU.

The modules are being developed by JU’s Teri Chenot, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, and UF Health Jacksonville’s Roberta Christopher, Director of Nursing Research. Dr. Chenot and Ms. Christopher are founding members of the only approved QSEN center in Florida.

“This funding will provide the initiative to provide quality and safety education to nurses and build on academic-clinical partnerships to improve health outcomes for Florida residents,” said Chenot.

The funding comes on the heels of several other grants won recently by JU’s College of Health Sciences, including $141,659 from the Department of Veterans Affairs to help in the care of rural veterans, $870,000 from the U.S. Department of Health to recruit hundreds more student veterans to JU’s Nursing program, and $190,000 from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of coughing in protecting the airways of patients with swallowing disorders.

Helping the CHS faculty with their writing efforts is a three-year grant from the Riverside Hospital Foundation that underwrites a majority of a full-time grant writer’s salary, a position dedicated to the development of the CHS and its programs. The Riverside Hospital Foundation was a catalyst in helping JU grow its existing health care programming to form the College of Health Sciences. Its vision to fund the dedicated grant writer position enabled the CHS to pursue timely funding opportunities.

The JU College of Health Sciences is the region’s premier provider of leading-edge health sciences education, with a commitment to preparing health professionals for careers defined by excellence in practice, community service and lifelong professional development. For more information on the JU College of Health Sciences, visit http://www.ju.edu/cohs.