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Fall 2005 Nurse-Friendly Hospitals Announced By Texas Nurses Association

Posted on: Thursday, 15 September 2005, 18:00 CDT

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Nurses Association today announced that three more Texas hospitals have emerged from a vigorous review process to earn the distinctive Nurse-Friendly Hospital designation. They are: Woodland Heights Medical Center, Lufkin; Harris Methodist Erath County Hospital, Stephenville; and Memorial Hermann Fort Bend Hospital, Missouri City.

These newest Nurse-Friendly Hospitals designees -- announced at a special recognition luncheon held during the 5th Annual Nursing Leadership Conference of Texas Nurses Association (TNA) -- now join an elite group of only six Texas facilities who have earned this three-year distinction. It means that 12 essential elements of the ideal practice environment -- as defined by nurses and research -- are present in the facility's practices, policies and culture. Key to the designation process, the facility's own nurses confirm through a confidential, online survey that their facility is committed to nurses, and values their contributions in its overall pursuit of safe, quality patient care.

"It's certainly an accomplishment to be recognized as a hospital that values and supports its nurses and provides the kind of practice environment that enables them to attain the highest quality of patient care," points out Kathleen M. Light, EdD, RN, president of Texas Nurses Association. "It's even more exemplary when the facility's own nurses confirm that is so."

The three, newly designated facilities emerged from a collaborative effort of TNA and the East Texas Area Education Center (AHEC) -- a program of The University of Texas Medical Branch -- to get the 12 nurse-developed, nurse-friendly criteria of TNA adopted by hospitals throughout the state. With the benefit of a five-year-plus, $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to improve nurse retention and quality of care in rural and small (less than 100 beds) hospitals of Texas, TNA and AHEC formed the Texas Nurse-Friendly Program for Rural/Small Hospitals(1) and set out to apply the 12 nurse-friendly criteria of TNA to rural and small hospitals. To date, 30 client hospitals are participating in the no-cost consultation provided by the grant program and are at varying stages of the implementation process.

Mary Wainwright, MS, RN, project director of the Texas Nurse-Friendly Program for Rural/Small Hospitals and deputy director of the East Texas AHEC notes, "If every hospital in Texas achieved the Nurse-Friendly designation, we could probably make a huge impact on the nursing shortage by retaining more nurses in the workforce." She points out that the next designation period -- Spring 2006 -- has an application deadline of February 1, 2006.

The first Nurse-Friendly Hospitals to be designated were the Spring 2005 designees, announced during Nurse Week of May 2005. They were Hopkins County Memorial Hospital, Sulphur Springs; Wise Regional Health System, Decatur; and Tyler County Hospital, Woodville.

(1) The Texas Nurse-Friendly Program for Rural/Small Hospitals project is funded in part by USDHHS/HRSA/BHP Grant #D66HP01379.

The Texas Nurses Association is a professional organization of registered nurses, and the only Texas affiliate of the American Nurses Association. Texas Nurses Association seeks to promote excellence in nursing by helping nurses achieve quality patient care through high standards of practice, legislative involvement, and public policy advocacy.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050503/DATU069LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com

Texas Nurses Association

CONTACT: Clair Jordan, MSN, RN, Executive Director of Texas NursesAssociation, +1-512-452-0645

Web site: http://www.texasnurses.org/

Source: PRNewswire

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