Barbara Drew -- RN, PhD, FAAN, Lillian & Dudley Aldous Professor of Nursing Science, School of Nursing, University of California San Francisco will receive the AACN-GE Healthcare Pioneering Spirit Award.

The award, from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and supported by GE Healthcare, will be given at the 2011 National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, Chicago, April 30-May 5. This AACN Visionary Leadership Award recognizes significant contributions that influence high acuity and critical care nursing and relate to the association's mission, vision and values.

Consistently funded by the National Institutes of Health, her studies helped to shape the development of commercial cardiac monitors and effect positive patient care in hospital and pre-hospital settings. Drew's research has focused on improving electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring techniques and clinical practices in hospital and pre-hospital settings for more accurate diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmias, myocardial ischemia and drug-induced prolonged QT syndrome.

Her leadership in developing guidelines to improve ECG monitoring has culminated in a five-year project funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to implement in hospitals the AHA standards for ECG monitoring.

Drew established that patients with acute coronary syndrome who experience transient ischemia, and usually demonstrate no symptoms, require continuous ECG monitoring to identify heart muscle injury. Based on Drew's data, the American Heart Association (AHA) Practice Standards for ECG Monitoring in Hospital Settings recommend ST segment monitoring for all patients admitted to the hospital with acute coronary syndrome.

Drew is a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the American Heart Association's Council on Cardiovascular Nursing. In 2005, she became the first woman and first nurse to be elected president of the International Society of Computerized Electrocardiology.

Source: American Association of Critical-Care Nurses .