ENA Lantern Awards

The ENA Lantern Award recognizes emergency departments that demonstrate exceptional and innovative performance in leadership, practice, education, advocacy and research — a way to showcase your ED’s accomplishments in incorporating evidence-based practice and innovation into emergency care, and a visible symbol of your commitment to quality, safety, and a healthy work environment.

The Lantern Award is not easy to achieve, but once won, the Lantern Award designation is your ED’s for three years, and you may apply again.      

Your Lantern Award Story

The Lantern Award application asks you to tell your story. What you are proud of and what you do well is the story we want to hear.

The Lantern Award application includes quantitative questions that focus on performance and outcome metrics, as well as qualitative questions about noteworthy practices and attributes of your emergency department. The qualitative questions require brief narratives or longer descriptive exemplars that highlight your emergency department’s excellence and innovation.

Your story, as you define it in your application, will cover each of these core areas:

• Leadership – Practice: qualities that foster professional pride, confidence and a community of support for emergency nurses
• Leadership – Operations: operational improvement activities and development of systems and processes
• Education: instilling knowledge and competency through quality and accessible education
• Advocacy: how the future of the emergency nursing profession and quality patient care are influenced through advocacy and innovation in your emergency department
• Research/Practice: advancing the emergency nursing profession and practice through quality improvement, research and the evaluation of clinical outcomes.

Lantern Award recipients receive a physical award to display in their emergency department as well as recognition through ENA publications and conferences, and the ENA website. In addition, award recipients are entitled to use an official Lantern Award seal in communications and advertising for the duration of the award period (e.g., in email signatures, on your website and in advertisements).

The Lantern Award is open to all emergency departments who complete the application process and provide the required documentation as requested in the application. The award period is three years and recipients have the option of re-applying at the end of their award period. The application form is available online and must be completed online.