NURSING AT ESSENTIA

Overview

Excellence in teamwork

Essentia Health nurses are leading the global transformation of nursing practice to enhance patient care for everyone, everywhere. Essentia Health’s journey to achieve Magnet designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) is to recognize nursing excellence, a commitment to quality patient care and innovations in nursing practice. ANCC's Magnet designation is the highest international recognition that a health care organization can attain, and Essentia is currently working to achieve Magnet designation at all 18 of our hospitals.

Essentia Health nurses work in every medical and surgical setting — hospital, rehab center, hospice, outpatient clinic, surgical center, laboratory — and in all specialty areas.

In addition to its hospital locations, Essentia Health includes clinics, hospitals and health care facilities that serve more than communities across Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota. These sites provide highly skilled professional nursing services to their local communities.

Vision & Mission

Nursing Vision

Exceptional Nurses Delivering Extraordinary Care While Advancing Practice

Nursing Mission

Nursing, as the strength and foundation of patient care, brings compassion, advocacy, resilience and excellence to patients, families, colleagues and communities of care.

Compassion—ensuring a caring, healing environment

Advocacy—delivering patient, family and community-centered care

Resilience—relying on inter-professional, collaborative teamwork

Excellence—leading and innovating high quality, evidence-based care

Guiding Principles & Philosophy

Guiding Principles

We, as nurses,

Believe that our mission is to provide science-based, technologically precise, safe, high quality, compassionate, relationship-based patient and family-centered care.
Define nursing as a scientific discipline that takes a holistic approach to the diagnosis and treatment of potential and actual responses to illness.
Promote comfort and healing with the goal of lessening the effects of illness by assisting patients to achieve an optimal level of self-care.
Practice in a dynamic healthcare system which promotes lifelong learning for all health professionals.
Accept professional accountability to patients, families, colleagues, and the community.
Believe that we best serve through collaboration and coordination with other healthcare professionals throughout the continuum of care by treating and advocating for those in need.
Commit ourselves to support, acknowledge and nurture one another, thereby creating a culture of teamwork, professional development, mutual respect and caring.

Philosophy

Building on our greatest strengths, nurses, and the inter-professional teams, we will develop a new standard of excellence in integrated patient care, research and education while advancing the practice and professional role of Nursing.

This will be accomplished while attending to the following priorities: providing safe, evidence-based patient and family centered care and making a difference in the quality of life and health for patients and families now, and for generations to come.

The Professional Governance Model is being adopted by Essentia Health Nursing leadership as a method to facilitate staff consultation and participation in decision-making processes. The Professional Governance model will:

(i) Optimize the participation of nursing staff members in the decision-making processes when appropriate

(ii) Promote collegial relationships

(iii) Aim to generate consensus in professional practice matters

It will offer nurses in all settings and at all levels of nursing practice the opportunity to participate in planning, implementing, evaluating and revising the nursing practice. Professional Governance will guide professional nursing practice and ensure alignment with our ANA’s Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements.

Team-based care

Nursing excellence

Every day, Essentia Health nurses apply their knowledge and expertise to the care of people with increasingly complex conditions. Essentia recruits the best nurses. These nurses integrate into the high standards and unique work environment of Essentia to provide an unparalleled patient experience.

Essentia Health nurses are vital members of your care team. They are part of a talented interdisciplinary team of doctors, pharmacists, patient educators, dietitians, social workers, integrative medicine and health practitioners, and others, depending on your needs and plan of care.

Contributions of professional nursing at Essentia Health

Essentia Health’s nursing excellence is based on a professional practice model that centers on you and your family. That core commitment is enhanced by a culture that values clear communication, diversity and inclusion, professional growth, and support for nursing's voice in effecting meaningful changes to patient care and the work environment.

Nurses' skills extend far beyond the bedside. Essentia nurses contribute to the discovery, translation, application and diffusion of new medical solutions and innovative care models to provide novel, best-in-class diagnosis and treatment.

Essentia Health nurses fulfill many roles, including:

Caring healer. The compassionate care offered by Essentia nurses incorporates evidence-based best practices, research and feedback from patients. Your nurses assess, evaluate and monitor you, and they carry out many other responsibilities, such as taking your vital signs. They listen to your concerns so that they can provide individualized care.
Teacher. Essentia nurses are health educators for patients, families and communities.
Navigator. Your nurse advocates for you and guides you and your family on your health care journey. Your nurse also coordinates with other members of the care team. Clinical nurses help prepare you for discharge from the hospital and transition to the next level of care.
Problem-solver. Professional nurses are trained to be proactive problem-solvers in every care setting. That may involve coordinating the care of people with complex medical needs, assessing processes to enhance value and efficiency, anticipating a complication in a patient's condition, and responding to unexpected challenges.

Essentia nurses are educated to provide care that considers patients and their families in a holistic manner, including their support systems and their physical, psychological and social needs.

Other contributions of professional nurses at Essentia Health include:

Participating in shared decision-making on the unit and in departmental and organizational committees
Leading, participating in and disseminating evidence-based nursing practices that yield safe, high-quality patient care
Partnering with interdisciplinary teams to drive change that improves patient care
Committing to process simplifications that remove barriers to excellent care
Implementing and using new technology to meet patient needs
Conducting research to improve patient care

Learn more about nursing roles at Essentia Health.