2025 Nursing Annual Report
Carrie Howard Canning
Chief Nursing Executive
Dear colleagues,
I became a nurse at 19, and I have spent essentially my entire nursing career with UVM Health. This path has given me the opportunity to work at UVM Medical Center, Elizabethtown and CVPH in several nursing specialties and nursing roles. I believe everyone has a story, and we only hear what someone is willing to share with us. This builds over time as relationships are developed and shared experiences take place. This is true for all of us, including the patients and families we care for.
That is how I intend to step into the chief nursing officer role at UVMMC this September. I am looking forward to understanding each person’s story and every team’s story. I recognize this will take time. I plan to listen, learn, ask questions, and look for ways to build and strengthen relationships with each of you, your teams as well as the patients and families we serve.
I know health care and how demanding the work is every day given the pace, complexity and the amount of change. What I do not know is what is true on your unit right now - in your specialty, on your shift – after a year like this one. That is knowledge you hold and I don't, and I would rather ask for you to share with me so that I better understand, advocate and support you.
So here is what I will ask of you, and what you can hold me to. Tell me plainly when something isn't working. I would rather hear it early, from the person closest to it, than find it later in a report. In return, I will be transparent about how decisions get made, including the reasoning behind the ones you disagree with, and honest when I don't yet have an answer. I will expect the same of our leadership team. And I will work to bring nurses into decisions before they are made rather than after.
This past year asked a great deal of you. Teams changed. Practices changed. The environment around the work changed, sometimes faster than anyone would have chosen. I know that has landed differently for different people, and that for some of you it has meant real loss.
And still the focus remained on patients and families with the work moving forward. Nurses here improved quality and safety, strengthened evidence-based practice, brought new nurses along, taught the next generation of clinicians and found ways to make new practices work in real conditions. Nurses are connected to healthcare in a way no other profession is and are important. What has been accomplished this year is not a small thing to do in a hard year.
It is also what makes nursing at an academic medical center distinct. Care, teaching, discovery and innovation happen in the same room at the same time, with a patient and a family in the middle of it. Holding all of that together takes judgment, humanity and courage – and it’s nursing at its very best.
Thank you for everything you have contributed this year – for your patients, for your colleagues and for our communities. You are essential to the care we provide, and you are essential to who we are and our story. I am looking forward to the work ahead, and to doing it alongside you.