Happy Nursing Professional Development Week!

All week long, Northwell Health has been celebrating Nursing Professional Development Week! We’re celebrating the values that make our nurses Made for the great work they do every day. From sharing their knowledge in a Truly Ambitious way to seeking Truly Innovative opportunities and by working Truly Together, Nurse Educators and Nursing Professional Development (NPD) Practitioners lead the professional development of our health care team.

Did you know that Northwell Health offers nurses various personal and professional growth opportunities to continue to excel in our health system? Here are some of those opportunities:  

#1: Summer Nursing Student Extern Program:

At Northwell, we’re always working toward delivering better care and that means developing the next generation of talented nurses. Our Nurse Educators coordinated 78 nursing students from schools across the U.S. to participate in the Northwell Health summer nurse extern program. After a formal orientation at the Institute for Nursing, students continued to a Northwell Health hospital site to work with a Registered Nurse in various specialties. We’re excited to see where these Truly Ambitious nursing students go with their career.

#2: Academic Progression Counseling:

Academic progression counseling is available to Northwell Health nurses seeking to continue their life-long academic goals and support in achieving specialty certifications. So how did they do it? There are over 60 nursing affiliation agreements to support clinical experiences at Northwell facilities and Northwell Health nurse educators serve as preceptors to nursing professionals furthering academic progress in BSN, MSN, Ph.D., and DNP programs. At Northwell, nurses have the opportunity to attend on-site classes at select locations where they get to work towards their BSN or MSN degree. We are proud to offer a Master of Science-Nurse Practitioner program with several specialty tracks to help our nurses continue their education and advance their practice at our Hofstra-Northwell Graduate School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies.

#3: Professional development:

We believe that nursing is never business as usual and we’ve built our professional development course to back that idea. Our Passport to Preceptorship e-learning module and courses are available to Northwell Nursing Professionals. And they’re popular! In 2017, 528 nurses completed the i-learn preceptor module and 191 nurses attended the in-person class. Our Nursing Leadership Basic courses offer a foundation for excellence within the organization for over 90 new and aspiring nursing leaders and the SOURCE learning lab for clinical staff enhances clinical skills and creates an individualized learning environment. Not to mention, specialty orientation classes attended by over 490 nurses including Cardiac Devices, Core Concepts of Mechanical Ventilation, and Basic and Advanced Neurologic Concepts.

#4: Orientation:

We want all of our team members to start off on the right foot. So we ensure that our nurses have the tools to do so! Nurse educators provided orientation across Northwell Health specialties for over 2,500 nurses and patient support staff in 2017. The knowledge, skills, and behavior in the orientation program provide the foundation to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), Clostridium difficile (C difficile), and other infections; pressure injury; and helped to increase team communication, humanism, and critical thinking.

We’re excited to spend the week celebrating Nurse Educators at Northwell Health! Learn more about our incredible nursing opportunities here.