Ms. Hughes is senior vice president and chief nurse executive for Virtua Health, leading professional nursing practice and patient care across a multi-hospital system with extensive ambulatory and community-based services. She is responsible for setting systemwide nursing standards, aligning practice and quality expectations across sites, and advancing care models that improve patient outcomes while supporting workforce sustainability. Ms. Hughes stands out for her ability to lead through complexity, notably guiding the integration of nursing operations following Virtua Health’s acquisition of New Jersey-based Lourdes Health System and helping establish consistent standards of care across the expanded enterprise. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she played a central leadership role in response planning and care-delivery redesign to protect frontline teams while sustaining safe, effective care under extreme demand. Post-pandemic, she has driven workforce rebuilding and wellbeing efforts, while expanding pathways for education and career advancement through academic partnerships, as highlighted by the relocation and transformation of the Lourdes School of Nursing into the Rita & Larry Salva School of Nursing and Health Professions. She has also championed forward-looking innovations such as “virtual nurse” care models and the adoption of AI-enabled smart care platforms to reduce administrative burden. She also aims to strengthen safety, including fall prevention, and enhance the patient and clinician experience. Her leadership has supported Magnet redesignation success across multiple Virtua hospitals and a strong shared-governance culture that elevates nurses’ voices in practice decisions.
