May 23, 2002
Endowment recognizes nurses
Claire Dietz
HS News & Community Relations
A Nursing Recognition Endowed Fund to honor and support the work of nurses at both UW Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center was established about a year and a half ago with a gift from an anonymous donor. Since that time a recognition committee led by the chief nursing officers at each institution has conducted a survey of all staff nurses and used the results to determine how the available funds would be used each year.
“This gift acknowledges the crucial role that nurses play throughout the Academic Medical Center,” noted Dr. Paul Ramsey, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, when the fund was set up. “Nurses are always there for our patients, and they are highly deserving of this wonderful recognition.”
When the joint UW Medical Center/Harborview committee conducted the survey, the group decided that the best approach would be to have each institution determine which programs to pursue.
At UW Medical Center, the primary priority identified by nurses was supporting specialty certification. Other top choices were recognizing all nurses during National Nurses Week, held each year in early May, and providing support for continuing education opportunities.
In a recent letter to Dean Ramsey, Susan Grant, chief nursing officer and associate administrator at UWMC, noted that “Most of the opportunities that we have been able to support through the Nurse Recognition funds would never have been available to nurses if the endowment had not been established. For example, two of our nurses this year had a paper accepted at the World Congress for Intensive Critical Care Medicine. This was a tremendous honor for the two of them and for UWMC. We were able to partially fund their attendance at this conference so that they would present their scholarship and represent the outstanding nursing practice at UWMC.”
The Nurse Retention Committee at UW Medical Center, which includes nursing staff from across the organization, has developed a mechanism to provide partial support from endowment funds for nurses pursuing specialty certification.In addition, some funds are used to support recognition activities during National Nurses Week.
At Harborview, nursing staff had a preference for a unit-based program, in which each nursing unit would choose a recognition activity that the group would appreciate, noted Cindy Hecker, chief nursing officer and associate administrator. Requests have ranged from funding for pizza parties to celebrate achievements such as clinical department rankings in the U.S. News & World Report annual hospital survey, to support for a luncheon lecture on patient safety principles for nurse managers.
In addition, Harborview nurses are recognized in a “Pride in Performance” program that sends individual cards and gift shop certificates to nurses who have made extra efforts for a patient, family or their unit, Hecker said. Several recognition activities were also held in conjunction with the national nursing week.
The endowment fund has also supplemented an existing Nursing Scholarship Program that supports current staff seeking degrees in nursing. Because the funds were available, two additional scholarships were added this year for nurses pursuing advanced degrees.
“The Nursing Recognition Endowment Fund has allowed us to recognize our nurses in a variety of ways that were not possible in the past,” Hecker noted in her letter to Dean Ramsey.
Both of the chief nursing officers expressed their appreciation for the gift that created the endowment and for the opportunities to honor nurses at their medical centers.
