UW News

January 27, 2005

School of Nursing

The School of Nursing will receive funding from UW Medical Center for a new endowed professorship, Dr. Nancy Woods, dean of the School of Nursing, announced earlier this month. The $250,000 gift, to be made over a five-year period, will establish the University of Washington Medical Center Endowed Professorship in Nursing Leadership.

“UWMC’s support of an endowed professorship reflects our growing partnership and the medical center’s understanding of the critical need to support nurse leaders during our national nursing shortage,” Woods said. “Because of high competition for a shrinking number of nursing faculty, this professorship will help the school attract or retain a top faculty member and will serve to help educate our nurse leaders of tomorrow.”

The UWMC Endowed Professorship in Nursing Leadership will enhance the base salary of a full-time faculty member in the UW School of Nursing, helping to make salaries more competitive with those at peer institutions. The award will recognize an outstanding faculty leader and support his or her work in educating future nurse leaders, both in academic and clinical settings.

“It is one of the pivotal positions that illustrates the more formal relationship that the medical center and the School of Nursing now have built together over the last few years,” said Susan Grant, chief nursing officer at UWMC and assistant dean for clinical nursing practice at the School of Nursing. “My goal and Nancy Woods’ goal was to build that bridge and to strengthen our partnership so that we could strengthen nursing and consequently strengthen the patient care that we deliver.

“Nursing leaders reside in various settings and at all levels of the nursing organization, whether it’s academic or practice-based, and that leadership provides the vision for where we want to be with patient care and the patient experience,” Grant continued. “The future of nursing lies in the academic and practice partnership, and the strength that you build through collaboration.”