In Grand Celebration of Our Nurses

It has often been said that nurses are the backbone of a hospital, and that is clearly true at GBMC. The more than 1,000 nurses, across the GBMC HealthCare system, work very hard to deliver to all the care that we would want for our own loved ones. Without them, we would have no system.

I often write in this blog of all of the things that we are working to fix in our national healthcare system but nursing is not one of them.  I am a firm believer that the United States has the best prepared and hardest working nurses in the world.

GBMC’s nurses have been known for outstanding care at the bedside, but now they’ve also become leaders in quality improvement. Just look at our patient falls rate, our CAUTI rate, or our patient satisfaction scores.

Our nurses have done an outstanding job collaborating marvelously well with their physician colleagues and others to help us achieve our four aims.  And we cannot forget all of their contributions towards making our Epic implementation so successful.

Caring for sick patients with many needs requires physical and mental stamina. Our nurses are smart, well-trained and resilient. Their work is not predictable. I am so grateful for their ability to adapt to the variability in demand for their services from day to day and sometimes from minute to minute.

I am so grateful for the commitment, compassion, and expertise that our nurses bring to their work.  We will be celebrating The Art of Nursing this Friday night and I look forward to seeing many of our nurses at the event.  I am very proud of all of them and honored to call them my colleagues.