Offered By: Senators Sears and Hartwell

NO. R-195Page 1

NO. R-195. House concurrent resolution congratulating the nursing staff at Southwestern Vermont Medical Centeron the center’s second designation as a Magnet® hospital.

(H.C.R.127)

Offered by: Representatives Morrissey of Bennington, Botzow of Pownal, Browning of Arlington, Corcoran of Bennington, Komline of Dorset, Krawczyk of Bennington, Livingston of Manchester, Miller of Shaftsbury and Mook of Bennington

Offered by: Senators Sears and Hartwell

Whereas, the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) is a national organization that develops standards for evaluating the professional qualifications of nurses and the services they provide to patients, and

Whereas, this evaluation process encompasses the qualifications of nurses as individuals and as teams working in an institutional setting, and

Whereas, in an institutional context, the ANCC’s Magnet® hospital designation program recognizes a hospital or medical unit’s nursing staffs that have satisfied a set of criteria whose attainment means the hospital or medical unit delivers coordinated nursing care that is of the highest possible caliber, and

Whereas, these criteria or forces of magnetism used in awarding a hospital Magnet® designation include the quality and vision of the nursing leadership, the dynamism and responsiveness of the organizational structure, the support that the management style gives to the nurses, the creativity and flexibility of the personnel policies, the professional authority allotted to nurses in the model of care, the quality of care offered, the opportunity to improve the quality of care, the opportunities afforded for consultation with medical experts when required along with the adequacy of the resources provided to the nurses, the autonomy given to nurses in providing care to patients, the quality of the nursing staff’s relationships with other health care and community organizations, the teaching role of nurses and the image of nursing in the health care community, interdisciplinary relations among heath care specialists within a medical center, and professional development opportunities that are offered to the nursing staff, and

Whereas, the ANCC assessed the nursing staff at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center on each of these Magnet® forces and gave the center high grades in every instance, and

Whereas, the stellar report that ANCC compiled on Southwestern Vermont Medical Center’s nursing activities resulted in the hospital’s redesignation as a Magnet® hospital, and

Whereas, this honor reflects on the outstanding nursing staff and services that serve as the institutional foundation of SouthwesternVermontMedicalCenter, now therefore be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives:

That the General Assembly congratulates Southwestern Vermont Medical Center on the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s designating the center as a Magnet® hospital, and be it further

Resolved: That the secretary of state be directed to send a copy of this resolution to Katherine Riley, MSN, RN, the assistant vice president of operations at SouthwesternVermontMedicalCenter in Bennington.