Nursing Strategic Plan
Strategic planning enables an organization to look into the future
in an orderly and systematic way, ensures that a hospital remains
relevant and responsive to patient/community needs and provides a
clear and consistent organizational focus. It also provides a basis
for monitoring progress, results and impact. At Stanford Health Care
(SHC), the hospital and each department engage in the strategic
planning process.
Stanford Health Care (SHC) strategic planning process
SHC's Executive Team, including Chief Nursing Officer Nancy Lee,
participates in annual Strategic Planning Retreats to determine SHC
enterprise wide goals for the upcoming year. The resulting Strategic
Plan focuses on enterprise wide tactical categories critical to
hospital operations:
- Access & Capacity
- Quality
- Finance
- Patient Experience
- People
Each department, including Nursing, develops an Operating Plan
outlining key departmental tactics and initiatives, as well as a
Dashboard including operational metrics that support achievement of
SHC enterprise wide goals. The nursing leadership team developed these
plans, which were reviewed and approved by the SHC Executive Team. The
Nursing Department Operating Plan is updated on a quarterly basis and
the Dashboard is updated on a monthly basis.
Together, the Operating Plan and Dashboard serve as living documents
that enable the Nursing Department to share and monitor progress in
all areas. These documents are posted in visible areas of the hospital
for our team members and patients alike to review.
Nursing strategic plan development background
The 2010-2015 Nursing Strategic Plan was developed by a core team of
nursing leaders and reviewed by nursing staff at all levels of
practice at SHC. Significant efforts were dedicated to ensuring
alignment of the Nursing Strategic Plan with the SHC strategic
planning process. The proposed plan was vetted through the Shared
Governance structure, reaching over 200 council members. Staff input
was sought and feedback was received from over 25 Clinical areas. All
feedback was reviewed and incorporated into the plan as appropriate.
The plan was ultimately approved by the SHC Board.
Nursing leadership aligned nursing excellence categories and goals
from the Nursing Strategic Plan with SHC enterprise wide tactical categories.
Annual updates
The Nursing Department Operating Plan and Dashboard is developed at
the beginning of each fiscal year, during the annual strategic
planning process. The Nursing Strategic Plan will be reviewed to
ensure appropriate elements are being covered and focused on each year.
How do we share this information?
While many units continue to use Staff Meetings as a mechanism to
share updates and discuss new ideas, every inpatient unit now has a
huddle every day and every shift. Huddles are led by nursing
leadership and are an opportunity for unit leadership to not only
provide key operational updates, such as nursing strategic plan
components, staffing issues or hospital crowding, but also to review
key unit performance metrics, engage staff in providing ideas on how
to improve in certain areas and celebrate successes.
Every inpatient unit also has a Visibility Wall. A Visibility Wall
is designated space that includes information and data relevant to the
area in a way that is translatable to staff, physicians and
patients/families. It improves viewing, access and transparency of
information, such as key performance metrics and nursing strategic
plan elements, and also provides an opportunity to engage staff,
physicians and patients/families in continuous improvement efforts.
Nancy Lee, Chief Nursing Officer, and Wendy Foad, Assistant Chief
Nursing Officer, also share this information in various Shared
Governance Councils as well as during Open Conversations, which are
face-to-face meetings with staff.
If you have any questions about your Visibility Wall and/or ideas on
how we can improve display and sharing, please let one of your
Managers know.