Acquisition of new facilities into a health system required implementation of a nursing leadership structure for a Women’s Strategic Service Unit (SSU) with administrative oversight of strategy and operations for Perinatal services.  Acquisition of individual community facilities presented challenges and opportunities for the SSU to attain standardization of practice and quality while promoting integration into a multi-hospital health system culture.

Proposed change:

Development of a nursing leadership model for a Women’s SSU to coordinate standardization of practice and quality for perinatal programs within a multi-hospital health system.

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation:

The organizational structure of the Women’s SSU was designed with resources across the health system to maximize efficiency and availability of limited resources in low volume programs.  Women’s SSU Nurse Managers are brought together from across the health system regularly for the standardization of processes, policies, and quality initiatives to develop care practices that are consistently implemented in each program.  Monthly meetings with the SSU leadership team include the identification of population specific and regulatory issues for discussion and resolution, performance improvement activities, and implementation of health system initiatives.  The Women’s SSU monthly leadership team meeting forums include rotation of on-site meetings throughout the health system facilities in addition to the use of interactive technology including Web Ex, telephone conference calls, and video conference media to maximize resource utilization while promoting interaction and collaboration.   

The Women’s SSU system leadership structure has facilitated the development of a cohesive nursing leadership team with mentoring and support for new members from existing members.   Learnings shared in the Women’s SSU leadership team interactions resulted in the implementation of optimal processes and standardization of practices across the health system.  The system structure for management of the Women’s SSU facilitated the achievement of consistent outcomes across the health system perinatal programs for perinatal safety clinical measures, The Joint Comission Perinatal Core Measures, and Women’s SSU Blueprint dashboard measures of quality. 

Implications for nursing practice:

Centralized Women’s SSU nursing leadership oversight and activities promoting collaboration and interaction of local nursing management supports the cohesive development of a team of nursing leaders within the specialty of women’s services.  The centralized health system Women’s SSU structure promotes a support network for colleagues managing similar patient care delivery services for practice issues, population specific performance improvement activities, staff resource sharing, and mentoring and leadership development. 

Keywords: Centralized leadership, Standardization, Team Development