Mary Tonges, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
| Senior Vice President, Chief Nursing Officer
and Associate Dean for UNC Health Care in the School of Nursing.
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
It is with great pleasure and
pride that I share Nursing
highlights for this year.
As you view this annual
report, you will see the
strong commitment of the
University of North Carolina
Medical Center to the art
and science of nursing. I
think we all recognize that these are turbulent times for
health care, and I recently read a quote from Alfred North
Whitehead, an English philosopher, that is very applicable
to our current work, “The art of progress is to preserve order
amid change, and to preserve change amid order.” The high
points of this year’s work can be summarized as follows.
P E O PL E
UNC Hospitals was recognized, and we celebrated at the
National Magnet Conference in Baltimore in October, 2011.
Of the over 1,000 abstracts submitted, three from UNCH
were chosen for poster presentations. The topics ranged
from “Aspiring Nurse Leaders” to “VADs from Acute Care to
Rehab” and “S.A.G.E. Nurses.” Dean Kristen Swanson and I
were honored to be invited to give a podium presentation on
communicate the great success of shared governance and
structural empowerment of nurses in our organization.
In May we launched our on-site NAII program and will
have the capacity for 120 participants per year — a terrific
opportunity for our Nursing Assistants that I am so glad we
are doing.
SERVI CE
We have continued to have very high HCAHPS scores and
based on these scores, we’ve been ranked #1 in the country
for overall patient centeredness by the University Health
System Consortium.
The Inpatient Experience Team launched three great
programs for our patients this year – the Monday night
dinners for families and visitors of patients in Memorial
Hospital, foot care provided by our team of Certified Foot
Care Nurses and most recently, beauty and barber services.
At the unit level, SICU received the ANCC Beacon Award
this year meaning that we now have 3 Beacon Awards –
CTICU, CICU and SICU. Congratulations! Not to mention
that CICU has gone over 3 years without a VAP. Actually,
there has only been one case of VAP in the last 5 years.
Quite impressive.
“Translating Caring Theory into Practice.”
Q U AL I TY
The Professional Development Council has been doing a
outperformed the national benchmark for skin, 82% for
lot of great work to further increase our NDNQI nursing
job satisfaction scores. They’ve collected and are sharing
“Bright Ideas” from units that outperformed the national
benchmarks in 5 of the 5 categories. The Diversity Council
created a Shared Governance Day to celebrate and
4
On the NDNQI quality measures, 78% of units
restraints and 77% for falls. We are contributing heavily to
the hospitals’ success in meeting or exceeding Blue Cross/
Blue Shield and Employee Incentive Program Quality Goals.
Nursing should be especially proud of reducing CAUTIs per
1,000 patient days to .73 as compared to a goal of .76.