Denver Health Nursing is committed to the achievement of high-quality care delivery to diverse populations. We honor our nurses and nursing staff through various methods, such as supporting the development of career planning and offering many opportunities for nurses to practice in a variety of settings.
Denver Health Nursing has a rich history of caring that includes opening the first nursing school in Colorado and the first nursing school west of the Mississippi.
The Colorado Training School for Nurses opened its doors at City Hospital (now Denver Health) on March 1, 1887. Since then, Denver Health has continued to be a leader in educating nursing students by offering almost 1,000 clinical placements each year. We value the opportunity to support the graduate nurses we hire through our year-long nurse residency, created in 2011. More than 1,600 Denver Health nurses account for more than 22 percent of the Denver Health workforce. Our nursing assistants, medical assistants, health care technicians, emergency department technicians, clerical teams and many others add to the caring focus of our patients. Through our vision, we are dedicated to caring and include a strong inter-professional focus on people-centered care delivery.
- We take pride in our 73 percent Bachelor of Science in Nursing rate and share our dedication to caring with our Associate Degree nurses and LPNs.
- Our male nurse rate is higher than the national average.
- We rarely use agency or travelers, instead using our internal Float Pool of over 260 highly engaged staff.
- In 2012, we selected Dr. Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring as the basis for our nursing practice.
- We are an aspiring Magnet® organization with a focus on quality care delivery.
- Improvements in nurse sensitive outcomes over the past three years include the following reductions: CAUTI 48 percent, CLABSI 69 percent. C. Diff 28 percent and falls with injury 68 percent.
- Nursing Grand Rounds occur four times per month with two sessions each on the day and night shifts.
- Our nursing orientation “gamification” model was adopted as a model for organization-wide orientation, we have offered a clinical advancement model, ProCAP for over 10 years, and each year, we exceed our projections for growth in national board certifications.
The mission of Denver Health is alive and palpable in our teams! We care for people in all types of life circumstances and value the diversity of our patients and their families. Our Shared Governance goals support the inclusion of the voice of nursing at all levels with our Shared Governance Board having over 52 percent staff participation.
Awards and Recognition
Denver Health Nursing participated in the key processes and outcomes that lead to us receive the Shingo Prize and the Peak Performance Excellence Awards. Nursing staff readily volunteered to train for and become one of the first nine Ebola Treatment Centers in the United States, designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We have received Beacon designations in two of our critical care units. We have had multiple statewide winners of the prestigious Colorado Nightingale award. During Nurses Week each year, we honor nurses in many ways that include education and fun through our EBP posters, research presentations, Trivia Bowl event and a very competitive kickball tournament.
Research
We have over 53 EBP, quality and research projects/studies being conducted. Some examples of our nursing research focus are listed below:
- Breast milk
- Diabetes prevention
- “Doula” (labor & delivery support) project
- Falls analysis
- Predictors of patient falls
- Project7, a mindfulness intervention
- Emergent dialysis system of care
- Moral distress
- Medication administration
- Weighted blanket for anxiety