ATTENTION ALL CKHS RNs: Please complete the Nursing Resource Audit. Deadline: August 4, 2008
To all Crozer-Keystone Nurses:
Each day, Crozer-Keystone Health System nurses skillfully turn patient care into an art. Our nurses combine expertise with compassion, efficiency with caring, and complex critical thinking with kindness to provide excellent care to our patients. Thanks to your exceptional skill and dedication, we believe that the health system has the potential to be designated a Magnet™ facility by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program®.
Magnet Recognition® status is an extraordinary honor that has been achieved by less than five percent of all health care organizations in the United States. CKHS deserves to be among them. Achieving this recognition signals nurses, the interdisciplinary team, patients and the community at large that this is a health care system where quality care and nursing professionalism are top priorities.
To prepare for the rigorous road to evaluation by the Magnet Recognition Program, we have established the CKHS Center for Nursing Excellence and appointed Zanet Lester, BSN, MSHA, as the center’s coordinator. A 30-year DCMH veteran nurse, Zanet created and enhanced the role of Coordinator for Childbirth Education, developing relationships throughout CKHS, the Delaware Valley and beyond. A graduate of Widener University, she received a master’s degree in health administration from St. Francis University. Her many years as a bedside nurse combined with leadership experience have equipped her for this critical nursing leadership role.
The goals of the CKHS Center for Nursing Excellence include enhancing professionalism for nurses and excellence in patient care, as well as recognizing and celebrating professional growth. In doing so, we will strengthen the “Forces of Magnetism,” identified by the ANCC, that exemplify excellence in nursing. These core measures include quality of nursing leadership and patient care, nurses as teachers, interdisciplinary relationships and professional development, among others. When fully in place, these forces will enable us to achieve the three Magnet Recognition goals: promoting quality in a setting that supports professional practice, identifying excellence in the delivery of nursing services to patients, and disseminating best practices in nursing service.
Moving toward Magnet Recognition status will require every nurse from every department to join in raising the bar of excellence. We believe that Crozer-Keystone’s exceptional nurses can tell us how to best accomplish the work to be done. Currently, work groups are being formed. If you would like to participate in this process, we encourage you to send an e-mail to Zanet Lester at zanet.lester@crozer.org or call her at 610-447-6012 (15-6012).
Working together, I am confident that we will raise our already high bar of excellence and earn the Magnet Recognition that CKHS nurses deserve to have!