Recognizing the care, commitment and resilience of our nurses

[5 min read]

In this article: 

• "The Power of Nurses" is this year's National Nurses Week theme.
• For the 23rd consecutive year, a Gallup organization poll found nurses to be America's most trusted profession. 
• North Division Chief Nursing Officer Renee Rassilyer-Bomers shares how Providence Swedish is supporting and retaining nurses, and creating pathways for new nurses to join the profession. Read more. 

It’s National Nurses Week, when we take time to recognize and celebrate the achievements of our nurses here at Providence Swedish and throughout the health care community. Nurses have long been symbols of care, commitment and resilience.

The pandemic brought the role of nurses — including their essential role in nearly every care setting — to the forefront more dramatically than perhaps any other time in modern history. Still, the nursing profession is struggling. Burnout is real. Nurses are exhausted. And some of our most trusted caregivers are turning in their scrubs after two years on COVID’s front line.

We spoke with Providence Swedish North Division Chief Nursing Officer Renee Rassilyer-Bomers about the incredible work of our nurses, the current critical moment and how Providence Swedish is supporting the future of nursing.   

Tell us about the importance of Nurses Week and recognizing our nurses’ contributions. 

Nurses Week  gives us a very welcome opportunity to recognize our nurses and everything they do. This was true before the pandemic, and it remains true today. During Nurses Week we celebrate each other, all the work we do, and the education and commitment to excellence that we bring to caring for our patients.  It's  important to recognize our nurses’ contributions and accomplishments. We have been through so much in the last five years and we want to affirm our nurses, their excellence and the way they care for our patients and our communities. This year’s theme “The Power of Nurses” is appropriate because our nurses have shown over and over again how powerful they are as caregivers, healers and advocates.

How are we bringing new people into the nursing profession while supporting the development of new and experienced nurses?

Well, right now we're at a pivotal point in healthcare in the United States. Nursing is a noble, needed profession. We've always needed nurses, and we always will.

During the pandemic the public saw in an unprecedented way the work of caregivers and especially nurses. We are continuously looking at new ways to bring people into nursing, create new pathways for those in profession, and keep nurses in nursing. And in fact, we have had a lot of success in reducing turnover rates at Providence Swedish.

We’ve supported professional development for new and experienced nurses and offered a broader pool of new pathways into the nursing profession. One high note is a nursing “apprenticeship” program that launched during the first wave of COVID that allowed nursing students to apply their hours working as a nurse technician to their clinical program requirements. This unique approach achieved two goals: helped students meet program requirements, while reducing the burden on their lives outside school as parents and breadwinners and encouraged participants to work at Providence Swedish after graduation. The program’s first cohort graduated last year; a group of 16 Seattle University nursing students came on staff at Providence Swedish as nurse technicians last fall.

This year’s theme “The Power of Nurses” is appropriate because our nurses have shown over and over again how powerful they are as caregivers, healers and advocates.

We also want to do as much as we can to help our nurses achieve their professional goals. One way we are doing this is through the expansion of our Simulation Center at Swedish Cherry Hill, a unique nursing training environment for new and experienced nurses to learn to handle emergency situations and procedures. The SIM Center offers some of the latest training technology available.  

And we are always advocating at the state and local level for meaningful changes that benefit nursing professionals and to foster a resilient and accessible health-care system.  

We’re also really focused on mentorship, which is a thing that brings me a lot of joy.
I look forward to my mentor meetings because I've got lots of folks from lots of different backgrounds and our work is very intentional because I want to understand the challenges in their professional development and growth. I think it’s important to foster relationships and help people in their success while being a safe space by sharing my own vulnerabilities and connecting with? what they're struggling with. It brings connectivity. People are more confident to try things out, put themselves out there, and really innovate with teams. I would say we have created something that feels like? inspirational, innovative magic.

Tell us about the importance of self-care for nurses. 

Self-care is critical to our profession, but it’s something we tend to prioritize the least. We have several initiatives aimed at bolstering nurse well-being as one reason why Swedish has been able to retain nurses at a much higher rate than the national average.

We’re routinely hearing is our nurses’ appreciation for the different ways we support their well-being, like our respite rooms, Code Lavender, and Lyra benefits, which all provide essential help and, in many cases, are funded by philanthropy. 

Respite rooms provide caregivers with a quiet space to rest and recharge during shifts. Code Lavender offers personal, real-time support from a trained volunteer team of Swedish employees to team members following a difficult work experience. Lyra is a mental health benefit that offers access to care, including therapy, coaching, and medication management.

There’s a multitude of different ways we can reach nurses. It’s to provide them with support where they need it and when they need it versus one prescriptive way. You can’t solve nurses’ well-being with just one approach.