The following is the New Jersey Nursing Initiative (NJNI) weekly news roundup, highlighting nursing and health care stories from around the state.
Pascack Valley CNO reflects on year since HackensackUMC hospital opened (Nurse.com)
Despite a six-year wait that included a bankruptcy filing by the former Pascack Valley Hospital and a court battle from competing facilities to keep it closed, HackensackUMC at Pascack Valley in Westwood, N.J., reopened last year thanks in part to the work of Chief Nursing Officer Susan Giordano, RN, BSN, MBA, NEA-BC, FACHE, and her team. “It has been a challenge of a lifetime,” said Giordano, who oversees 236 part-time and full-time staff members plus 108 per-diem staff at the 128-bed facility. The facility received the first license since 1984 for a new hospital in the state, according to HackensackUMC’s website.
Two faculty members and 12 student nurses from the University of Notre Dame in Jacmel, Haiti, received a warm welcome from faculty and students at the Trinitas School of Nursing during an intensive two-week stay in July. The visitors received an immersion in U.S. nursing practices, and most of the sessions were conducted in both Creole and English, thanks to bilingual faculty members and student “buddies” from the School of Nursing.
Nurses and other health care workers at Christ Hospital in Jersey City and Bayonne Medical Center have ratified new union contracts that include a 1.5 percent pay raise, increased employer matching contributions for workers’ retirement plans and increased staffing levels at both hospitals. The new labor contracts represented by the 12,000 member Health Professionals and Allied Employees union cover 400 nurses at Christ Hospital and 850 nurses and health care professionals at Bayonne Medical Center.