Note from the Product Coordinator: Nominate someone for an ACDIS Achievement Award, submit a poster for the 2024 conference!

by Karla Kozak

Did someone mentor and guide you as you navigated through your career in CDI? Do you know someone who has dedicated their time to serving the CDI profession? When you think of what makes someone a truly stellar CDI professional, does one person come to mind?

Well, we want to know! The time has come to recognize your colleagues’ outstanding achievements by nominating them for an ACDIS achievement award.

This year, ACDIS is offering the following five awards:

• CDI Professional of the Year: This award is the highest honor ACDIS bestows and recognizes an individual who stands out as a consummate representative of the best attributes of a CDI professional. New this year, nominees must have at least 10 years of experience as a CDI professional.
• Accomplishment in CDI: Formerly known as the “CDI Recognition of Professional Achievement,” this award recognizes an individual who has made significant achievements as a CDI professional in their facility or within their broader organization. This year, we have lowered the requisite experience: nominees need only have two years of experience in CDI to qualify.
• Excellence in Provider Engagement: This award recognizes an individual who has made a substantive difference within their organization and the broader community through enhancing medical staff understanding, collaboration, and engagement. At the time of their nomination, the nominee must have two or more years of experience.
• Melissa Varnavas Spirit of Service: For the second year in a row, ACDIS is offering this award named in honor of our friend and colleague, Melissa Varnavas. It recognizes an individual who has committed themselves to service by volunteering their time and skills to assist their peers and advance the CDI profession.
• Diversity in CDI: This award is intended to honor those organizations whose CDI departments are going above and beyond in terms of creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. Diversity in CDI encourages the inclusion of staff members from different racial, ethnic, and educational backgrounds (outside of the clinical realm), of all gender identities and sexual orientations, and of all abilities.

The nomination process is quick and easy to complete and can be accessed here. To learn more about each individual award’s criteria, click here. Recipients will be honored at the 2024 ACDIS conference in Indianapolis this April.

Additionally, ACDIS is also accepting poster proposals for the 2024 conference. This is your opportunity to show the CDI community what you, your team, and your organization have discovered. Posters detail an innovative project, newly established protocol, or successful educational outreach at your organization. Past posters have discussed topics such as query compliance, artificial intelligence, pediatrics, patient safety indicators, and CDI workflow, to name a few.

Poster creators offer insight and answer questions from passers-by during a designated break at the conference, granting us all the opportunity to see what is happening in CDI beyond our own backyards. What’s more, one producer for each selected poster receives $200 off conference admission, and all producers who attend the conference can earn four CEUs! To submit your poster idea for consideration, click here.

Note that all poster applications and awards nominations must be submitted by the end of the year to be considered. We cannot accept any submissions after December 31, 2023.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I appreciate you taking the time to consider sharing your contributions to the profession and recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of your peers.

Editor’s note: Kozak is an editor and product coordinator for ACDIS. Contact her at kkozak@acdis.org. To submit a poster, click here or copy and paste this link into your browser: www.surveymonkey.com/r/2024posters. To nominate someone for an ACDIS award, click here or copy and paste this link into your browser: www.surveymonkey.com/r/2024acdisawards