The Adult Critical Care Unit at St. Tammany Health System’s flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital have been recognized with a gold-level Beacon Award for Excellence from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses for 2025.
St. Tammany is one of only three Louisiana institutions to receive the recognition and the only one on the Northshore.
The Beacon Award recognizes hospital units that demonstrate sustained, high-level performance across key measures, including patient outcomes, nursing practice, quality improvement, and workplace culture. Units earning a gold designation must show a consistent commitment to evidence-based care, patient safety, interdisciplinary collaboration, and staff engagement.
As part of the rigorous application process, St. Tammany Health System’s Critical Care nurses identified and addressed multiple areas for enhancing the care they provide. That included:
-An initiative to reduce the rate of hospital-acquired pressure injuries, a key indicator of patient safety and quality of care. The STHS effort resulted in a 77% decrease in such injuries year-over-year.
-Implementation of a suite of security enhancements as a means of mitigating the local impacts of the ongoing national trend of violence in the hospital setting. Initial outcomes suggest these measures have led to increased staff satisfaction and fewer concerns about visitor-related threats during shifts, thus bolstering the contention that safety is not separate from quality but, rather, is foundational to it.
-Fostering a culture of support to encourage nurses to earn critical care certification.