We are excited to welcome Stefano Bambi to the Editorial Board of Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing (DCCN). Stefano has been an international presence with DCCN as an author, reviewer, and long-time supporter of DCCN. His international expertise will continue to inform us about global health care practice! At DCCN, we have been honored to disseminate Stefano Bambi's work, publishing 3 first authored articles in 2009, 2013, and 2014. In addition, he served as a coauthor for 4 articles appearing in DCCN in 2014, 2016, and 2018. In 2012, while working in the intensive care unit (ICU) and as a lecturer in critical care and emergency nursing courses at Florence University, Stefano wrote to DCCN providing us with a letter to the editor provoking discussion about clinical priorities for care in the emergency department (ED) and ICU.
Stefano resides in Sesto Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, where he began his health care career as volunteer rescuer, working on an ambulance for the emergency medical system in the Florence city area from 1990 to 1995. During this experience, he developed the desire to become an emergency and critical care nurse. In 1995, he earned a registered nurse certification in the Florence School of Nursing in Florence, Italy. As he continued his education, he earned a BSN certification at University of Tor Vergata, in Rome, Italy, in 1997, presenting a thesis entitled "Nursing Planning for Patients Affected by Acute Myocardial Infarction According to the Self-care Theory by Dorothea Orem."
Stefano spent 1997 working as registered nurse in the ED of "Careggi" University Hospital in Florence, where he developed competency in the management of ED patients. It was here he developed a "passion" for triage process improvement. In 1998, he was employed in the postsurgical intensive care unit of "Le Scotte" University Hospital of Siena in Tuscany, Italy. During this time, he realized the potential for integration between emergency nursing skills and critical care nursing skills. In fact, he said, "Emergency nurses have the special abilities to manage life saving priorities and the invasive procedures skills of emergency nurses. Critical care nurses are skilled to provide a global and systematic approach to the patient's needs, and to focus on restoring his/her health status." Later that year, he returned to Florence and again worked in the ED of Careggi University Hospital.
While working in the ED, he continued his personal course of studies, attending 3 postgraduate courses at University of Florence (Italy): earning "Emergency Nurse" certification in 2000 completing a thesis entitled "In-Hospital Transportation of the Critically Ill Patients" and "Specialties ICU Nurse" certification in 2001 with a thesis entitled "Weaning From Mechanical Ventilation: A Multidimensional Approach." He also achieved "Anesthesia & ICU Nurse" certification in 2003 and presented a thesis entitled "Noninvasive Ventilation From the Emergency Department to the Intensive Care Unit." During these years, he began to critically appraise scientific papers and engage in nursing research. Since 2000, he has been writing scientific papers and has attended a number of national congress programs sponsored by emergency and critical care associations. In 2007, he published his first research letter on an international nursing journal. He continues to write papers for Italian and international journals. Since 2001, he has participated in 12 research projects, serving as principal investigator for 5 studies. His academic career continued to expand from 2007 to 2012 when he was a lecturer in critical care and emergency nursing courses at the University of Florence School of Nursing. During the last year, he has resumed this academic role in the same School of Nursing.
From 2001, Stefano has also been a lecturer in emergency nursing, critical care nursing, nursing case management, and wound care in postgraduate university courses at the University of Florence, University of Bicocca (Milan), and University of Parma. In this role, he served as an advisor for students working on thesis in nursing and for nurses completing postgraduate courses. In 2008, he participated with a professional group on the revision and implementation of the ED nursing triage algorithms for the region of Tuscany.
In 2008, he started to work as a staff nurse in emergency and trauma intensive care unit of Careggi University Hospital. During this period, Stefano has continued his teaching activities, while learning more about the professional challenges related to the care of acute respiratory distress syndrome patients undergoing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and extracorporeal life support. Stefano encountered new clinical challenges related to critical care unit's safety, basic nursing care, and advanced monitoring in acute respiratory distress syndrome, trauma, brain death, organs donation, and sepsis. These issues have exerted a growing interest in advanced critical care concepts and encouraged continued research on these topics. In addition, he recognizes the crucial role of nurses in the assessment of patients who survived intensive care stays. His clinical and research interest expanded to explore the post-ICU follow-up of patients and their quality of life.
In 2011, he earned the MSN certification at University of Florence, presenting a research thesis entitled "Lateral Hostilities Among Critical Care Nurses: A Multicentric Survey." Following this first study about lateral hostilities, he worked in collaboration with other members of the Italian Association of Critical Care Nurses (ANIARTI) to design a new and deeper survey about lateral hostilities and bullying for nurses working in critical care units, operating theaters, ED, and emergency medical system through the whole Italian territory. The results of this study were published on DCCN!
Stefano pursued a PhD in nursing science at the University of Florence from 2012 to 2015. His research project was to design and validate a new psychometric tool to investigate the presence of workplace incivility, lateral violence, and bullying among peers in nursing. The doctoral thesis was entitled "Lateral Hostilities and Bullying Among Nurses." Currently, he is working in the medical and surgical intensive care unit of Careggi University Hospital as staff nurse. Stefano currently serves as a peer reviewer for national and international scientific journals and most recently has been appointed as a member of the scientific committee of ANIARTI. During the last 5 years, he wrote, in collaboration with other authors, a monography on nursing monitoring in critical care units (in Italian), a monography on high-flow nasal cannula (in Italian), and a book on nursing in critical care settings (in English). Moreover, he cowrote 2 chapters (1 about HFNC and the other on educational issue in NIV) for international books on noninvasive ventilation to be published in the next year.
Stefano's main research interests are evidence-based critical care nursing, in-hospital critically ill transportation, invasive and noninvasive mechanical ventilation issues, extracorporeal supports in ICU, basic care nursing in critical care units, family presence during resuscitation and invasive procedures, open visiting policies for ICU/patient-family-centered care, lateral violence, and bullying in nursing. He shares his personal views of the nursing profession, saying, "I was very impressed by pragmatic approach offered by the Interventional Patient Hygiene Model framed by Kathleen Vollmann. I think that Kathleen offered the opportunity for critical care nurses, to ennoble all the spectrum of basic nursing care. If nursing care is performed following the best available evidenced, it can be essential to improve the patient's outcome. In my opinion there's a lot research to perform in this area, and there is the opportunity to increase the number of the component included in the model." He shares another personal belief "that the main strategy to reach consistent changes and improvements in nursing is to start in the classrooms of the universities nursing schools. Critical thinking and respectful behaviors principles should be taught at the beginning of nursing course of study. The role of inspiring mentorships in clinical setting could be the foothold to putting the theory in practice and implement actual changes."
Stefano tells us-"To be an editorial board member for DCCN is an honor for me. The first paper in English Language that I read in was "Intra-Hospital Transport of the Critically Ill Adult: A Research Review and Implications" by Caruana & Culp. This paper was published in 1998 in Dimensions of Critical Care Nurses. I was very impressed by that review, which exerted a noteworthy influence on me, inspiring the writing of my first Italian article about nursing during in-hospital transport of critically ill patients. From that moment, I've read many papers published on DCCN and I've used their contents to arrange my lessons for university courses. Moreover, I've a debt of gratitude towards the reviewers and the editors of DCCN, since they were always available to help me in improving my manuscripts. Their contributions have offered to me the opportunity to improve my writing skills. I am very excited to begin this new amazing challenge and I hope to do a good job for the journal."
Please join me as we welcome Stefano to our editorial board. His work will continue to make our journal a valued source of information and inspiration for our global audience.