Professional Practice

Our nursing and organizational initiatives support our mantra and goal: “We Put Patients First.”

In everything we do, we make patients our first priority. We strive to provide them with the highest-quality, safest and most compassionate care and service. Together, we align nursing quality and performance-improvement initiatives with the hospital's quality initiatives and service lines. Our work fosters an environment of professional engagement, which provides our nurses with the means to excel in practice, quality, safety and research.

As the largest healthcare profession in the largest and highest-ranked hospital in New York City, our achievements resonate throughout the hospital and beyond. Our high professional efficacy positively impacts our patients. Our high standards yield superior outcomes and superlative-quality care. Our standing strategic goals include:

• Transforming Care and Practice
• Quality and Patient Safety
• Professional Development and Education
• Serving the Community
• Partnerships
• Technology
• Financial and Operational Efficiencies

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Nursing Credentialing Services (NCS)
NCS is responsible for the credentialing and privileging of Advanced Practice Nurses (APN). This includes Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Midwives and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists.

NCS also tracks, monitors and ensures current licensure, BLS, ACLS, PALS, EFM and NRP of nursing personnel in the Department of Nursing.

Quality
We maintain an integrated quality program, unified with the hospital’s rigorous data-driven Quality Plan. The Nursing Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement Program measures the outcomes of nursing performance, maintaining systems for the analysis and communication of data.

We track nursing-sensitive indicators, such as pressure ulcers and falls. The goal is to always reach higher patient safety outcomes. Quality metrics are reported on an integrated scorecard across all inpatient sites and benchmark performance against external databases such as National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI). These pieces of data are used for tracking and trending performance and driving evidence-based practice.

Research
The Department of Nursing is committed to the pursuit of inquiry through nursing-led research. We promote nursing research and research-related activities. Our findings are essential to safety, quality outcomes and cost-effective patient care.

Our Nursing Research Governing Council and campus-specific Nursing Research Councils facilitate approval and implementation of nursing research and related activities. Our councils support research utilization and organize an annual Nursing Research Symposium at each site. These initiatives help develop core competencies in research throughout our clinical nursing staff.

Shared Governance
Through a “Councilor Model” shared governance program, our nurses are continuously empowered to effect change, shape their work lives and influence nursing practice. You’ll find us active in organizational decision-making, community involvement and standard-setting. Via shared governance and other mechanisms, we make it our mission to recognize excellence when we see it. Collegiality is key in intra- and interdisciplinary relationships. Diplomacy, collaboration and respect play a critical role in our ever-advancing specialties.

Shared governance is one only way we involve our nurses in the process. We set goals collaboratively. Collective input helps us all to identify techniques that make those goals a reality. Critical thinking, autonomy and accountability will continue to play a critical role in our advancing patient care.

More About The Councilor Model
Our nurses utilize the “Councilor Model” to meet our goal of shared governance. Grounded in empowerment, this method allows professional nurses the opportunity to influence the direction of patient care through active participation on committees or task forces.

Nurses collaborate in committees to achieve goals established by the Department of Nursing, as well as the organization. Nursing Leadership and nursing teams at each site ensure practice standards are consistently implemented. We’re constantly seeking feedback, refining goals and putting research to work through our committees and councils.

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