Janice Walker, DHA, BSN, RN, joined Gainesville, Fla.-based UF Health as senior vice president and chief nursing officer in January, a newly created role built to help unify nursing practice and professional development across all of UF Health.
Dr. Walker spent her first 90 days rounding across UF Health’s acute care hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, psychiatric hospital, home care, clinics, mobile community clinics and ambulatory surgery centers.
“In order to lead an organization, you have to acclimate to their culture and their beliefs and their mission and values,” Dr. Walker said during an upcoming episode of “Becker’s Healthcare Clinical Leadership Podcast.”
From there, she convened the system’s chief nursing officers, alongside leaders from the University of Florida College of Nursing, to begin building the health system’s first System Nursing Clinical Excellence Framework – organized by pillars and classification timelines of “must, should, and could.”
After creating an initial draft, Dr. Walker’s team brought in associate vice presidents of nursing, educators, Magnet leads, communication leads and HR talent acquisition team members to stress-test it against variation across campuses. The final priorities were organized around the system’s Pillars of Excellence and then sorted into three buckets: must, should and could.
“All the things that a seasoned system chief nurse exec would expect to be aligned is where the priorities started to show themselves,” Dr. Walker said, emphasizing a focus on standardizing nursing practice, professional development, recruitment and retention work. “There’s a journey there to take on harmonizing our professional practice models and what shared governance councils we’re going to have, who are the representatives across all the UF Health hospitals, and how do we talk to each other and learn from each other.”
“UF Health has several Magnet organizations but will continue to develop gap analysis and roadmaps around all of our acute care hospitals to either achieve Magnet or Pathways to Excellence accreditation”
Recruitment, nurse onboarding, and nursing peer-review practices also vary across the system’s hospitals.
Nurse residency programs are one of the clearest examples. Some UF Health hospitals run nurse residency programs accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. Others have programs not yet accredited, and several are just beginning that process.
“We have put the flag in the sand, per se, that we are going to one nurse residency accredited by the ANCC, with Vizient as our partner of our database on how we track all of our new graduate nurses across the University of Florida,” Dr. Walker said.
The residency curriculum will be aligned system-wide, she said, which in turn brings consistency to how preceptors, mentors and educators handle onboarding for new graduates – setting them up for success and strong retention metrics.
“That’s just one example of a lot of variation in the practice environment that we have opportunity for improvement to continue to advance nursing as one center of nursing excellence at UF Health,” Dr. Walker said.
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.
