Seven nurses complete ‘Caring Advocate’ program
WARWICK — Seven registered nurses, all serving in Orange and Rockland County hospitals that form the Bon Secours Charity Health System, participated in a graduation ceremony held Thursday, April 18, In the chapel at Mount Alverno Center in Warwick.
Bon Secours Charity Health System comprises Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Suffern and Bon Secours Community Hospital in Port Jervis and St. Anthony Community Hospital in Warwick, New York.
The nurses had just successfully completed the Bon Secours Health System’s Caring Advocate Education Program, a system-wide educational initiative to prepare nurses with knowledge, experience and practice skills rated to a nursing professional practice model that emphasizes Dr. Jean Watson’s Theory of Caring and Relationship-Based Care.
In 2007 Watson founded the international nonprofit Watson Caring Science Institute with the mission to restore the profound nature of caring-healing in today’s health care systems and to retain its most precious resource - caring professional nurses and transdisciplinary care team members.
The new Caring Advocate Education Program nurses were mentored for six months by Jo-Ann Robinson, director of professional practice for Bon Secours Charity Health System. Their work and study projects focused on self-care to prevent nurse burnout; developing trusting relationships with patients and coworkers; and creating a caring, healing environment.
The registered nurses and their institutions are:
St. Anthony Community Hospital
Pauline LaBella
Kimberly Connelly
Lynn Hickey
Anita Sultana
Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center
Heather McManus
Bon Secours Community Hospital
Carol Heaney
Schervier Pavilion skilled nursing facility
Peg Palermo
“This wonderful program validates what we do as nurses,” said Caring Advocate graduate Anita Sultana, nurse manager the for medical-surgical unit at St. Anthony Community Hospital. “It will help us to continue proving excellent care for our patients.”
Bon Secours Charity Health System nurses are invited to apply and to be part of this annual program, which will begin in September.
Watson’s Theory of Human Caring (Caritas) is now used in approximately 300 health care institutions in the United States and other institutions worldwide. The Bon Secours Charity Health System is committed to the adoption of her Theory of Human Caring and the “Caritas” philosophy, hospital officials said in the press release announcing the graduation.