April 30,
2007
Pat Chiverton says nurses are today’s health
care innovators
Pat Chiverton will be officially installed as the
University’s first Pamela York Klainer Endowed Chair in Nursing
Entrepreneurship during a ceremony on May 1.
Patricia Chiverton, dean of the School of Nursing and
vice president of Strong Health Nursing, has been named the
University’s first Pamela York Klainer Endowed Chair in Nursing
Entrepreneurship. Chiverton, whose eight-year tenure as dean has been
marked by a number of changes and innovations at the school, recently
discussed the key role nurses play in addressing the nation’s health
care crisis and how nursing entrepreneurship is changing the paradigm for
nurses in Rochester and beyond.
Was there a certain event in your life or point
in your career that sparked your interest in nursing entrepreneurship?
Although I don’t think I would have called it
that at the time, I had my first brush with entrepreneurship as chief of
psychiatric nursing at Strong. My research focused on transitioning nurses
from the hospital to the home with the goal of improving follow-up rates,
lowering costs, and reducing emergency room visits for patients with mental
illness.
When this transition proved successful, we were asked
by Blue Cross Blue Shield to provide case management services for their
psychiatric patients. Since the fee-for-service reimbursement structure of
the hospital could not sustain a managed care intervention, I moved over to
the School of Nursing to launch the program through its community nursing
center. This was my first foray into writing business plans and integrating
business models into nursing—and it stuck.
What was the impetus for creating the Center for
Nursing Entrepreneurship (CNE)?
When I became dean, the School of Nursing was in
financial crisis. Enrollment was down, research dollars were sparse, and
the only thing that was really growing was the community nursing center.
Shortly after that, Blue Cross pulled its program back
in and we realized that we could not rely on one business to sustain us. We
had to diversify our business streams. By creating viable new businesses we
were able to generate ongoing revenue for the school that we couldn’t
generate through research or tuition dollars.
We were then able to apply those dollars towards our
education and research missions. Despite a budget deficit we were able to
create innovative programs because we had those dollars. That strategy has
continued to be successful to the present.
Nurses have traditionally been viewed as
caregivers rather than idea and revenue generators. Has that perception
started to shift?
I think the perception of nurses has really evolved
over time. Nurses’ closeness to patients has put them in a prime
position to spot innovations for change. They can identify gaps in
services, areas of mismanagement, and ways to streamline processes.
This, of course, has always been the case, but
what’s different today is the urgent need to address the looming
health care crisis. The future of health care depends on our ability to
come up with new and better ways to provide care to consumers and I truly
believe that nurses are key players in this endeavor.
What we’re trying to do at the Center for
Nursing Entrepreneurship is give nurses a supportive environment and the
tools they need be change agents both within their current institutions
and, when appropriate, on their own via new business ventures.
Given the gravity of the nation’s nursing
shortage, how do you strike a balance between encouraging nursing
entrepreneurship and keeping nurses at the bedside?
Our goal is to enhance the nursing workforce, not
deplete it by taking nurses away from the bedside. However, at a certain
point in their careers, many nurses either cannot or choose not to do
bedside nursing any longer. Instead of losing experienced nurses to another
profession, we want to harness their knowledge and work with them to create
new ways of providing care.
At the same time younger nurses have wonderful,
creative ideas but they need and want to remain at the bedside.
That’s where we encourage nursing intrapreneurship, which is
entrepreneurship within an organization.
How do nurses utilize the services of the
entrepreneurship center?
An interested nurse would meet with one of us at CNE
and share their ideas. In most cases we would send them back to do more
homework, but we would also support and guide them through the creation of
a business plan and help them tackle tough questions associated with
launching a new business.
We also help nurses by connecting them to our advisory
board members and others in the business community who can help them
flesh-out their ideas. The center can also function as an incubator for a
new product or a new idea.
What do you think the future holds for nursing
entrepreneurship at the School of Nursing?
In the past few years we have learned a lot about what
works and what doesn’t. We also know that we want to be on the
cutting edge, a leader in both health care and in nursing. So in order to
do that we always need to be thinking about what’s next and how can
we improve care.
In the past we had to focus on revenue generation
because of our financial position. Now, thankfully, those days have past
and we can begin to focus more on scholarship and spreading nursing
entrepreneurship nationally. The opportunities are endless when you
consider the size and complexity of the health care system and the dire
need to improve and enhance care for generations to come.
Ryan McGinn is senior public relations associate
for the School of Nursing.
| Previous story | Next story |
