At the Chief Nursing Officers Patient Safety Leadership Forum, held in Indianapolis, Ind., top nurse leaders from around the world devised strategies for addressing and defining nurses' role in improving patient safety. These nurse-executives believe the profession can accomplish this goal by undertaking initiatives in technology, patient safety, nursing leadership, and patient-safety research. Attendees crafted four strategies nurse leaders could use to make patient safety a priority:

1. Include nurses in the development, purchase, and implementation of patient-safety technology so they can help implement change.

2. Collaborate with health care associations to help hospitals learn from best practices, so nurses can be educated to identify trouble spots in patient care.

3. Develop a process to foster a safe work environment, and delegate non-nursing tasks to other health care employees so nurses can focus on patient safety.

4. Ask state hospital associations to designate some of their dues to help fund programs that focus on patient safety. Participants plan to take the strategies back to their individual hospitals.