Our Nursing Vision and Goal
Let Humankindness guide our holistic care, advancing nursing as innovative leaders for evidence-based compassion. Join St. Luke’s Health, the employer of choice for outstanding patient care.
A Word from Our Nursing Leadership Team
This past year has allowed us to reflect on the incredible accomplishments of our nursing staff. Throughout the pandemic, meeting the demand for nursing talent and the challenges our profession faced in meeting that demand, expanded our care-giving to an unprecedented level of self- sacrifice. That reflection has allowed us to focus on our future, and the rebuilding required, in order to thrive rather than just survive. Working together we will rebuild and be the best in all of CommonSpirit Health. Striving in exemplary best practices, our goal will be to lead the nursing profession at the national level. We demonstrate this aim in the type of care that only we can provide - unsurpassed expertise and compassion. We are entrusted by our patients daily to provide this unique quality of what we do and who we are. I am so honored to be a part of an incredible nursing team who revels in facing complexities and challenges on a daily basis, demonstrating what it means to be a Baylor St. Luke's nurse, and why a BSLMC nurse is so special. That specialness is a gift shared with each of our patients by continuously "caring to be the best".
This next year we will work tirelessly to become our best through compassionate caring about each individual we interact with to improve the human experience for all. The Baylor St. Luke Nursing staff will show the rest of the country what "caring to be the best” looks like by the way we practice and by the outcomes we achieve. I could not be more excited about our future!
- Baylor St. Luke's Nursing Administration Leadership Team
Nursing Shared Governance
Baylor St. Luke’s professional nursing staff, both patient care givers and administrators, share a nursing governance structure established on trust and mutual respect to fulfill the mission and vision of BSLMC. We believe a shared leadership structure provides professional nurses with the opportunity to participate in nursing and interdisciplinary decision-making and policy formation that affect their individual practice, the delivery of nursing care, and overall patient care. The shared governance structure empowers nursing staff through shared clinical decision-making that facilitates autonomy, enables nurses to develop and demonstrate knowledge and skills, and leads to collaboration between nurses and other health care providers. The professional nursing staff at BSLMC believe that the best possible environment for the delivery of patient care is within a structure in which ownership for patient care decisions and actions are vested in the professional nurse.
Team Excellence in Research
Our BSLMC Nursing Research and Evidence Based Council (NREC) was nominated and awarded the Research Team Award at the CommonSpirit Health Research Institute's (CSHRI), February 2023 Research Summit. This honor is the first for nursing research within CommonSpirit Health. Our research study was conducted during the height of the COVID pandemic, and the project is titled: ‘Non-ventilated prone positioning in the COVID-10 population.’ While proning research is both ongoing and extensive in the ICU population of COVID-19 patients, minimal research has been conducted with acute care patients. This research manuscript details a randomized controlled trial of 216 patients in which the researchers used a systematic approach to educate patients and staff about patient self-proning, implemented self-proning every 2 hours, and monitored escalation of oxygen levels, as well as length of stay in the acute care unit. Even though results indicated no statistically significantly differences, clinical differences were indicated in self-proning.
Nishant Varghese, RN (Chair), Marie Hodges, RN Second row: Christi Knapp, RN, Jenny Li, RN, Michael Guffey, RN Center: Geraldine Jones, Phd, RN (Advisor)
BSLMC Nurses in the Community
Nurse Residency Program
For approximately 5-6 years Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center has captivated the hearts of newly graduated nurses and gathered them into the fold of nursing professionals committed to mentoring and guiding them as novice practitioners. This has never been, nor will it ever be an easy process for either, the novice or the expert. However, the rewards and benefits to both are staggering as we see an emerging maturity in the one who felt so lost at
the beginning. There is a rare soul who does not remember the feeling of those first days in the care setting, nor do we forget that first time something went awry that should not have! As the years have moved on without our noticing the change of season, health care now is entrenched in a time of adventure where we are essentially partnering with academia as we “train” new graduates, usually straight from university. We call this our Nurse Residency Program - A year, the first year, for new nurses contracted with BSLMC for greater than 200 hours of multimodal education that includes:
1st 18 week, 9 course curriculum
Bi-weekly classes
Pre-work for the next class
2, 8-hour days of Skills “Boot Camp”
A “professional leadership” core curriculum starts at about week 19
Nurse Residents are also challenged with investigating literature, choosing a topic or initiative, and designing an Evidence-Based project, as well as lead-ing that project. For example: meeting a nurse resident during rounds on one of our care units, we discovered that he had designed and was leading a trial with the Purewick external catheter for male patients on that care unit. The project was purposeful in design and action with the data (outcomes) followed being: skin integrity protection, and patient satisfaction with this type of intervention. Our Nurse Residents are quite resourceful and creative in their choice of projects.
After their initial New Employee Orientation and Electronic Health Record training, Nursing Orientation ensues followed by another week of online classes and initial introduction to their unit. The next week is the start of the official National Nurse Residency Program content (with exams) and onto the next adventure and introduction to their assigned units where they will spend the rest of their year as a Nurse Resident. At the end of these 52 weeks a Graduation Ceremony!
Bridging the Healthcare Gap, Together
Our National Nursing Vision and Goals
- Be stronger together, achieving excellence in all we do, collaborating across the field and growing our collective knowledge.
- Let Humankindness guide us as we treat every person with holistic, personalized care for the body, mind and spirit.
- Advance the science and art of nursing as innovative leaders who demonstrate the power of evidence-based, compassionate care.
- Our goal is for CommonSpirit Health to be the employer of choice for nurses and their teams in a system that is widely known for outstanding patient care.
To address health inequities, we must work together.
Our Story: “Medical Bridges is a grassroots non-profit that brings caring people together to challenge healthcare inequities in a sustainable way. We know that in every community there are dedicated doctors wanting to care for people, but lack the necessities (gloves, needles, syringes, beds, etc.) to treat their community. In partnership with global health leaders we identify and help meet the needs of their patients. It is our dream to redistribute all medical surplus in the U.S. to supply underserved doctors around the world. We want to build a strong foundation for an equitable and healthier Tomorrow.” Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.