Nurse Coordinating Council

The Nurse Coordinating Council (NCC) is comprised of the chief nurse executive and a senior nurse executive from each hospital, as well as the Network’s Chief Executive Officer and Director of Clinical Integration.  The NCC Chair reports progress on nursing initiatives to the Network’s Board of Directors.   The NCC sets clinical, educational and performance goals for nurse-sensitive patient outcomes, measures and monitors patient satisfaction trends and proactively deals with nurse practice issues.

 

RWJ Health Network Partners and NCC Nurse Executive Members:

Bayshore Community Hospital	Wendy Brown, MS, RN
Carrier Clinic	Carol Kosztyo, RN, MSN, C.
CentraState Healthcare System	Linda Geisler, RN, MNEd, CNAA, BC
Children’s Specialized Hospital	Karen DeWitt, EdD, RN
Raritan Bay Medical Center	Joan Harewood, RN, MA
RWJ University Hospital	Kathi Kendall Sengin, RN, PhD, CNAA
RWJ Hamilton	Debbie Baehser, RN, MHA, CNE
RWJUH at Rahway	Arlene Tomchik, RN, MPA, CNAA, BC

 

Focus Areas:

The NCC’s annual goals cover a broad spectrum of clinical and administrative areas. As appropriate, the NCC establishes committees to accomplish specific objectives and to include other Network nursing leaders in goal achievement. The NCC is responsible for the goals and provides direction and support for all committees.

• Patient Satisfaction –monitor patient satisfaction trends and improve inpatient and emergency department patient satisfaction; share best practices and present findings at an annual forum for staff nurses
• Magnet Designation - continue education and support for Magnet application processes Network wide
• Education - foster leadership development for entry level managers and staff nurses; increase awareness of cultural diversity
• Quality – Monitor outcomes and improve compliance on nurse sensitive indicators. Present a Nursing Research/ Best Practices full day seminar for staff nurses in collaboration with the Network Research Committee.
• Research - Identify and quantify research projects and publications at Network hospitals to build a Network research catalogue. Sponsor an annual Network Research Day in collaboration with the Network’s Best Practice Committee.
• Collaboration - Identify existing and potential areas of clinical & academic collaboration for nursing practice and patient focused projects.
• Nursing Workforce Recruitment & Retention - Enhance and track nursing retention and recruitment initiatives.
• Community Activities - Report on hospitals’ participation in community activities
• Behavioral Restraint & Seclusion Use - Create a safe, healing, and non-violent environment for patients which will result in reduced physical and psychological injury and promote recovery

 

 

Innovation

Project Innovation – Magnet demographic data collection

The NCC’s nursing leaders developed a system in response to the need to simplify nurse demographic data collection and reporting for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) Magnet Recognition Program®.   StepOne™ is the result of that collaboration ….a system for nurses by nurses.

Network hospitals use StepOne™ to capture nurse demographic data for initial and re-designation Magnet applications as well as interim reporting. Excel spreadsheets in “ready-to-submit” Magnet format are built in minutes and have been accepted by the ANCC.  An ad hoc reporting feature supports additional reporting needs. Network nurse executives using the system report cost and time savings as well as tremendous improvements in data completeness and accuracy over traditional manual data collection processes.

The NCC documented the StepOne™ development process in an article published in the Journal of Nursing Administration.  “Magnet Demographic Data:  Creating a System to Streamline the Process” appears in JONA’s  November 2005 issue.