Building shared governance for nurses does not depend on whether a hospital is unionized, according to the new system chief nursing officer of Concord (N.H.) Hospital Health System.
Seanna Zimmerman, DNP, RN, joined the three-hospital system Aug. 24 from The Miriam Hospital in Providence, R.I., part of Brown University Health. She now oversees nursing across a system where nurses at two campuses are union-represented and nurses at the third are not. Nurses at Concord Hospital-Laconia (N.H.) and Concord Hospital-Franklin (N.H.) voted to unionize with SEIU 1984 in September 2025.
“The foundations of nurses wanting to be valued, to be heard, and the things that we do to ensure that that happens, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a union or not union,” Dr. Zimmerman, who also serves as senior vice president, told Becker’s.
She pointed to onboarding for new nurses and nurse leaders, leadership development and shared governance as work that applies systemwide.
“The bedside nurses know the bedside solutions,” she said, emphasizing the importance of “empowering them in a shared governance model to impact their work environment.”
Dr. Zimmerman said every health system she has worked in has included unionized hospitals. She added that unions are “popping up all over the place,” and that consistent leadership practices can shape whether nurses organize.
“As a CNO, one of my life’s missions is to ensure that our nurses are valued [and] heard, and I think that if we’re consistent with that, that’s what creates an environment that doesn’t lead to unionization,” she said. She cited visibility, nurse leader rounding, fair and equitable practices and consistency as examples.
In her first six weeks, Dr. Zimmerman rounded on every nursing unit at all three hospitals and shadowed bedside nurses in two-hour shifts. She has also worked with a CNO advisory council of about 20 front-line nurses that the system formed before she arrived. The council first met June 9 and has met monthly since.
“One of my top priorities is ensuring that I’m reachable, approachable, visible, so that they can escalate any sort of concerns and that there’s follow-through,” she said.
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