Description/Overview: Healthcare has turned its focus to quality and safety as essential elements for practice. A call to action from the Institute of Medicine outlines basic categories of competencies for healthcare professionals. To make fundamental changes to quality and safety, all professionals need competency development. This presentation describes how to design and adapt three innovative integrated programs using Quality Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) competencies for nursing and interprofessional teams. Application of these concepts into the practice setting is essential for continuation of this work and alignment of academic and practice settings. The first presentation describes the use of QSEN competencies as a framework for designing a clinical advancement program for practice. A 12- step process for building a comprehensive clinical ladder will highlight application of both pre-licensure and graduate level QSEN competencies as the foundation for practice. In addition, this evaluation of nursing practice will review how measuring and developing nursing competencies serves to improve the value of nursing within practice. The presentation will discuss the strategic addition of leadership as a distinct competency characteristic needed for practice. The second presentation discusses the process of integrating, expanding, and sustaining a clinical competency assessment model utilizing the QSEN framework. A four phased approach for building a comprehensive competency tool will be illustrated. The presentation highlights the pearls and pitfalls of implementing an innovative standardized approach to measuring competency. The third presentation discusses tool development, implementation, evaluation and program changes of the Evidence Based Practice (EBP) component within a one-year nurse graduate residency program. QSEN EBP competencies were used for building curriculum and an innovative evaluation tool. This evaluation tool assesses the knowledge, skills and attitudes of new graduate nurse over three separate time points related to integration of EBP into practice. Further development and application of this tool will be discussed.