The Greater Portland Chapter (GPC) of AACN Critical Care Consortium Committee exemplifies excellence in chapter collaboration.  The GPC-AACN Critical Care Consortium Committee is a collaboration of the GPC-AACN and fourteen regional hospitals.  In recognizing the need to standardize the critical care educational preparation, the GPC-AACN collaborated with area hospitals for consistency in critical care basic education.   Since 1997, this partnership of regional clinical nurse specialists, educators, and managers representing our hospital and health system partners has been able to offer an AACN CNE-Approved 6-day core critical care program 3-4 times a year for those new to the critical care setting.  Goals include: setting a community standard for and offering access to critical care education—locally and regionally; reduction of duplicate efforts in critical care courses, and development of excellent instructors for the course.

The GPC-AACN Introduction to Critical Care course is designed to be the didactic portion of a concurrent precepted orientation experience for a registered nurse or for senior nursing students with a concurrent precepted clinical rotation. Collaboration of clinical leaders in the area hospital systems and nursing schools to is essential to: develop and update objectives for the course, recruit qualified speakers, develop new speakers for the course, coordinate and support the courses at the various hospital locations, ensure the criteria are met and application is submitted for continuing nursing education hours, and appropriately select those nurses and students new to critical care. It is offered free to those approved from the Consortium and for a nominal fee to students and others. The GPC-AACN Consortium has offered 43 courses since its inception training over 2000 nurses to date.   Together, we are growing Stronger new nurses in the region to make a Bolder impact in our communities.