Why We Want to Do It
Even the finest physical facilities need the right team and talent to bring about excellence every time. It comes down to people. The demand for physicians, nurses, imaging technicians and pharmacists often exceeds the supply. Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital competes with urban medical centers for quality health care workers. As health care advances continue at a rapid pace, specialized training is as necessary in a community hospital as it is in larger, specialty facilities. Patients have increased confidence, knowing their care team regularly receives excellent training.
Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital must make continuing education a high priority for its health care team. In order to provide continuing clinical education, we must shoulder the cost of specialty-based training for physicians, nurses and technicians who would otherwise find career satisfaction and advancement by leaving our Columbia Gorge communities.
What We Are Planning to Do
To recruit and retain the best physicians, nurses and technicians, and to provide excellent patient care, every time, we must have a clinician education program that can ensure these goals will be met:
- Specialty nurse certification
- Specialty skills development for key clinical staff
- Financial support for advanced degrees
- Reaching national patient safety goals through team training
How our Patients and Community Will Benefit
On-site training to prepare for specialty nurse certification
- We want to ensure our specialty nurses (emergency, obstetrics, critical care, etc.) receive the training they need to prepare for their rigorous nursing and certification exams. This training aligns local nursing knowledge with national nursing best practices, critical for providing excellent patient care.
Clinical skills development in specialty areas
- Advances in medicine, a continued shift toward teamofocused patient care, and the need to recruit and retain staff, dictates new investments in education within several clinical specialties: critical care nursing, emergency medicine, clinical pharmacy and imaging (radiology) technology.
An all-bachelor's degree nursing staff
- Providence Health & Services is moving toward an allobachelors degree nursing staff. Associate degree nurses face the daunting cost of continuing education to earn their bachelor's degrees. Providence Hood River, on average, will need to provide support for four bachelor's degree track nurses each year.
Reaching national patient safety goals through team training
- The future of health care training is in simulation labs, where computeroprogrammed patient "smarties" (no longer called "dummies") help clinical care staff work as a team. Research shows that simulation and team training are the most effective ways to build a strong medical team. Physicians working alongside nurses, technicians and other patient care staff, all solving a patient crisis together, yield better medical outcomes. This teamobuilding method has been proven to significantly increase the success of patient care.
What You Can Do
Annual and estate gifts to support Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital Foundation's clinician education fund will augment the considerable investment we already provide to support the excellence every time philosophy.
Why We Want to Do It 