Team,
As your Chief Nursing Officer, I am deeply committed to leading and advocating for you while ensuring you have the necessary support to provide high-quality patient care. I recognize the challenges you face daily and appreciate your dedication to doing what is right for your patients. My commitment to working alongside you and our leadership teams to drive improvements remains steadfast. Together, with your full engagement, we will achieve meaningful results and continue to elevate patient care.
Your nursing leaders have been working diligently to ensure better staffing through meticulous examination of contract labor, critical shifts, overtime, float pool and PRN usage, which has resulted in much more stable staffing than we had even one year ago. Appropriate staffing, solid teams and adequate resources are a must, but these things alone will not result in high quality care. Excellence in nursing requires commitment, accountability, and supporting each other in upholding the highest standards.
As your CNO and advocate, it’s also my responsibility to be honest and upfront with you and make sure we have a practice environment that protects you and your license. When we signed up to be nurses, we knew there were expectations and accountability to higher bodies such as the State Board of Nursing. This governing body does a pretty good job of outlining the practice standards for “reasonable and prudent” nurses, and they make no bones about what it means to deviate from those standards and the non-negotiables of nursing practice. We will be using the Arkansas Nurse Practice Act as our guiding document for our back to basics approach and making sure we are all on the same page about the implications of things like delegated nursing tasks and avoiding situations defined by the Board as negligent.
I have been sharing the vision for UAMS nursing to move beyond surviving to thriving this year, and focusing on getting back to basics. I can feel the readiness for change and pride in the air. In the coming weeks, we will be working together to define these “non-negotiable” initiatives and how to push forward. From my perspective it means reaching a consensus as a nursing team on the practice standards that keep our patients safe with basic things like washing our hands, following isolation protocols, protecting skin integrity, providing central line and catheter care and patient hygiene. Our commitment to settling for nothing less than excellence for our patients and each other is what defines us and sets us apart as UAMS nurses.
I am beyond happy to be on this journey with you, and I have no doubt that our nursing culture will continue to improve as we work together to hold ourselves to higher standards. It will take some straight talk with one another and acceptance of accountability along the way, but together we will make UAMS the best place for patients to receive care and the best place for nurses to practice. I encourage you to reflect on what you consider non-negotiable nursing practices and be ready to share your insights and feedback with me and your nursing leaders.
Tammy Jones, PHD, RN, NE-BC
Chief Nursing Officer
Associate Vice Chancellor for Patient Care Services & Clinical Operations
Perioperative, Interventional & Imaging Services Division