UK HealthCare Nurse Executive Graduates From Program for Nurse Executives
LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 20, 2010) − Colleen Swartz, chief nurse executive at University of Kentucky HealthCare, graduated from the Johnson & Johnson - Wharton Fellows Program in Management for Nurse Executives, an intensive three-week management education program held at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Swartz was one of 38 senior nurse executives selected to participate in the program, which provides participants with critical business and management skills that enables them to be effective leaders in the ever-changing health care industry. This year’s participants are from the United States, Australia, and Canada.
The Johnson & Johnson - Wharton Fellows Program has been enhancing the leadership capabilities of nurse executives for more than 25 years. The program recognizes the important and influential role nurse executives have in strategic planning within their own health care institutions and in shaping health care policy issues regionally, nationally, and globally. Their input and influence have added significance today, given the serious nursing shortage that threatens the quality of health care in the U.S. and abroad.
“Once again, the Johnson and Johnson/Wharton Fellows Program has participants from numerous countries, as well as from for profit, not for profit, acute in patient as well as outpatient, and the US military,” said Gregory P. Shea, academic director, Johnson & Johnson – Wharton Fellows Program. ““This variety of backgrounds and yet surprisingly similar set of challenges promotes creative reflection and boundary breaking thinking in the face of the growing and daunting challenge of how to provide better health care at a lower cost.”
Wharton Executive Education competitively selects nurse executives to study strategic, financial, managerial, and leadership approaches to organizational development. During the program’s Executive Forum, nurse executives collaborate with their health care institutions’ chief executive officers to analyze the role of nursing in hospital management and strategic planning.
“I think the Wharton Fellows Program is of incredible value to nurse executives,” said Swartz. “The nurse executive is often asked to translate clinical information into a salient business case as well as translate the business model’s impact on the conduct of clinical care. The diverse skill set now required by the nurse executive is evident in the Wharton Fellows curriculum, focusing on behavioral changes and integration.”