Resources & Information for Nurses
Nursing is caring. It’s taking the extra step to make sure a patient is comfortable. It’s using technology to streamline patient care and increase patient safety without seeming detached. It’s making a difference in someone’s life through a gentle word or action.
We offer nursing careers at community hospitals, academic and children's hospitals as well as home health opportunities.
We love to highlight some of the many accomplishments form our nurses that show their commitment to our Mission.
Nurses are an integreal part of healthcare.
Our nurses are part of our interdisciplinary care teams and coordinate with other team members to ensure patient needs are met in a compassionate and timely manner. They work side-by-side with our physicians and other specialists in a professional and rewarding environment designed to provide the highest level of patient care possible.
At SSM Health, learning is an ongoing process.
We offer multiple training opportunities to our nurses, so they can utilize the latest advances in health care and become leaders in their field. We know nursing is a demanding field and want to provide our team members with the support and tools they need to successfully perform their jobs. Use the resources below and throughout this site to better understand your role and the importance it plays at SSM Health.
Continuing to learn and grow as health care professionals is an important part of delivering high quality patient care. Various options to engage in continuing educational offerings and receive continuing education credits are available to SSM Health employees.
SSM Health is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to offer continuing education credits across our system.
Opportunities include:
- Classes
- Conferences
- Inservices
Learn more about education and training opportunities avaiable to you.
SSM Health offers professional development pathways to nursing staff in a variety of roles. Our professional development pathways are intended to help staff identify growth and development options to grow in their current role or consider taking on a new challenge in another role, including:
Direct Care Roles
Magnet Recognition Program®
The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), the nation's largest and foremost nursing accrediting and credentialing organization, implemented its Magnet Recognition Program® in 1993. As a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association, the ANCC designed the program to identify excellence in the delivery of nursing services to patients. With a goal of promoting quality in surroundings that support professional clinical practice and providing a mechanism for disseminating best practices in nursing services, the Magnet program was developed.
Nursing and other leaders at Magnet hospitals recognize the importance of a well-educated workforce with a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. They understand the role that lifelong learning and workplace satisfaction play in safe, effective and high quality, patient-centered care. Achieving Magnet status serves patients, nurses and health care organizations alike. It provides them with the ability to:
- Attract and retain top talent
- Improve care, safety and satisfaction
- Foster a collaborative culture
- Advance nursing standards and practice
- Grow business and financial success
What hospitals at SSM Health are Magnet Hospitals?
As an organization, SSM Health strives for Magnet to recognition to create a culture that has the best patient outcomes and the best work environment. All of our entities are currently working on attaining their Magnet status. Current facilities with the designation include:
SSM Health Nursing Professional Practice Model
The SSM Health Nursing Professional Practice Model is a “… driving force of nursing care; a schematic description of how nurses practice, collaborate, communicate, and develop professionally.” In other words, a professional nursing practice model provides a framework for guiding and aligning clinical practice, education, administration and research.
Why do we need a nursing professional practice model?
- Gets everyone in the same boat and rowing in the same direction (better productivity and outcomes)
- Necessary to create a culture of excellence
- Requires making a set of values and performance expectations to which all nurses can subscribe
- Serves as a tool for change to get from where you are tow here you want/need to be
- Clarifies expectations, authority and accountability for practice
- Focuses and prioritizes work
- Overall evidence suggests that a professional practice model has a positive impact on the work environment in terms of the nurse’s role and patient outcomes
Essential elements of a professional practice model:
- Mission and Values
- Professional Relationships
- Patient Care Delivery Model
- Leadership and Governance
- Recognition, Awards and Development
Providing strategic direction for nursing.
Professional Nursing Practice at SSM Health creates an innovative environment for the achievement of exceptional outcomes while advancing and contributing to the profession. We partner with patients, families, providers and each other, using practices that are restorative, supportive and promotive in nature. SSM Health is the preferred partner for care across the health continuum.
View our nursing annual reports:
The Nursing Annual Report is designed to highlight a few of the many accomplishment and showcase the exceptional work of our nurses that demonstrate their commitment to our Mission. In these reports, we demonstrate how our nurses embrace our Values of respect, compassion, excellence, stewardship and community in the work they do every day.
As you will notice, our nurses have a voice in decision-making and have the opportunity to participate in the Nursing Practice Councils at the unit, entity, regional and system levels. Positive impact to patient care and the patient care environment can be found through our staff’s participation in LEAN and other interdisciplinary performance improvement activities. Through mentoring and succession planning, we foster promotion from within SSM Health into titled leader roles, as well as promoting the mobility of nurses who may be interested in moving into critical care, surgical services and the emergency department.