Development of the AmSECT Pillar Award to Identify Excellence in Perfusion.

The idea of recognizing centers that are achieving excellence in perfusion is first attributed to Carla Maul during her 2008–2010 AmSECT presidency (1). The concept was included in subsequent AmSECT strategic plans but did not begin development until 2014, when the thenAmSECT president Dave Fitzgerald created the AmSECT Safety Committee. This committee was tasked with, among other goals, the creation of such a program. Initial investigations by members of AmSECT revealed that similar awards in other fields have now been in existence for more than 25 years, with the American Nurses Association Magnet Recognition Program (MRP) being one of the oldest (2). A large body of literature has reviewed the MRP and found that facilities which achieve this standard have higher satisfaction scores among nurses and patients, higher likelihood of communication about errors, lower patient fall rates, lower pressure ulcer rates, lower catheter-associated urinary tract infection rates, lower mortality, lower nosocomial infection rates, lower rates of occupational injuries, and lower turnover and vacancy (2,3). Similar awards in other specialties appeared to be correlated with benefits, though not as extensively researched (4). After establishing the benefit of such programs in other fields, the AmSECT Safety Committee formed a task force in 2019 to develop the formal aspects of a similar perfusioncentric program. This task force was co-chaired by two members of the safety committee. We report here on the process the task force followed for development of the AmSECT Pillar Award, its pilot test, and current status of the program.