Our Strategic Nursing Priorities

Building a Legacy

The pathway to our first strategic nursing priorities.

After the launch of the CommonSpirit Nursing vision in Spring 2021, planning began to develop a pathway and infrastructure to make this aspirational statement a reality. This involved engaging nursing leaders across CommonSpirit to determine our top priorities to help meet the needs of CommonSpirit nurses.

Multiple priorities were suggested, including ideas such as creating and implementing a systemwide nurse orientation program, and providing more university partnerships to help nurses access advanced education and training. To evaluate proposals, nurse leaders participated in numerous feedback sessions to determine what would make the greatest impact to workplace satisfaction and to the careers of CommonSpirit nurses.

In the end, three distinct priorities were chosen for year one of our five-year nursing strategic plan: • Developing a comprehensive, ministry-wide Nurse Residency

Program

• Expanding our Virtual Nursing capabilities • Creating a new Internal

CommonSpirit Nurse Staffing

Agency

Each year one priority is part of CommonSpirit’s proactive approach to address the nursing shortage and reduce nursing turnover rates within our ministry. Focus groups of frontline staff members are being led by our mission colleagues to learn what nurses think the next set of priorities should be for implementation in years two and three of our strategic plan.

“We want to help enrich the roles of our nurses in every stage of their career, as well as attract and retain these sought after individuals.”

— Dr. Kathleen D. Sanford, DBA, RN, FACHE, FAAN, EVP and CNO

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The Southeast Division Nurse Residency and Fellowship team

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Nurse Residency Program

Ensuring that every nurse at CommonSpirit has support.

Built upon the best practices from individual nurse residency programs throughout CommonSpirit, our ministry-wide Nurse Residency Program is providing what research shows new nurses need in their transition to practice: purpose and connection, professional development, coaching, mentorship, consistent feedback loops, and the ability to grow and relish their strengths.

The ministry-wide nurse residency program will also provide the framework and infrastructure to serve as a foundation for new nursing workforce development programs that will be available for all CommonSpirit nurses.

“Our ministry-wide Nurse Residency Program uses science to improve the care delivery for nurses, as well as compassion and caring to deliver on our hello humankindness brand promise.”

— Dr. Connie Clemmons-Brown, DNP, RN, MBA, CENP, System SVP, Patient Care Services

Recruitment for the first residency cohorts will begin in mid-2022. RN Residency Fellowship group from the Southeast divisionFor more information, email nurseresidency@commonspirit.org.

Virtual Nursing

Providing around the clock care for the most vulnerable.

Virtual Nursing services for hospitalized patients have been in place in some CommonSpirit markets for many years. During COVID-19 the value of these services to complement on-site nursing care was demonstrated, when the virtual nurses performed time intensive tasks such as admissions and discharges. Given the dire forecasts about the shortage of nurses in the next 5-10 years, CommonSpirit is expanding its virtual services in markets where on-site and virtual nurses will work together to provide safe, coordinated care. The new virtual care team works in partnership with our Clinical Command Centers to develop

“Our virtual integrated care model provides many benefits. For bedside nurses, virtual nurses relieve them from certain tasks. For patients, virtual nurses are reassurance that an entire care team is focused on their needs.”

— Linda Goodwin, MSN, MBA, FACHE, System Senior Vice President, Nursing Transformation, Virtual Care & Innovation

virtually integrated care models. For more information, email gail.daly@commonspirit.org and linda.goodwin@commonspirit.org.

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Internal Staffing Agency

Leveraging our CommonSpirit nursing expertise at home.

Our Internal Staffing Agency offers many benefits to CommonSpirit nurses, including enabling them to keep seniority and health benefits while pursuing new nursing opportunities. It eliminates the need for CommonSpirit nurses to seek travel positions elsewhere. This internal agency will help streamline the onboarding/orientation process for travel nurses because they will already know our CommonSpirit values, policies and procedures, which creates a more consistent patient experience. For more information, email gail.daly@commonspirit.org. •

“The Internal Traveler program redefines the way clinical nurses work. You can now gain new skill sets across CommonSpirit locations that will accelerate your ability to care for patients across the care continuum.”

— Gail Daly, RN, MSN, System SVP, Clinical Operations, Integration Optimization

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