UVM Medical Center Nursing Professional Practice Model

The NPG Global Practice Council has been busy creating, with your input, our UVMMC Nursing Professional Practice Model (PPM). What is a professional practice model you ask? It is a frame work to direct and guide our professional practice of nursing, today and in to the future. It’s comprised of our vision, organizational guiding principles, core practice values, and cultural traits.

The PPM was developed by nurses for nurses. Practice Council members include inpatient and outpatient nurses, educators, nurse leaders and patient and family advisors. The initial phase of PPM development focused on taking data from the 2016 Future of Nursing focus groups, the 2019 Healthy Work Environment Summits, and the NDNQI RN Engagement Survey. The Practice Council worked to recognize themes that emerged about the practice environment nurses desired to have at UVMMC. These themes were then organized into our nursing vision, core practice values and  cultural traits and a draft of the PPM was created. The draft was shared with nursing through focus groups and the NPG open comment process. The feedback was analyzed by the Nursing Practice Council and revisions were made to the PPM. Once the content was finalized we engaged the Vermont Design Collective to develop a visual representation of the professional practice model.  

Woven throughout our guiding principles, cultural traits and organizational values is our Nursing Vision; “Nurses will be transformational leaders of highly coordinated, exemplary care in partnership with the care team, patient, family, and community.” The foundation of our nursing care is formed by our guiding principles of relationship base care, patient and family centered care and equity, diversity and inclusion. The four rings of the PPM are made up of our core profession-al practice values and supported by our cultural traits. The core practice values can be seen at the top of each ring and the cultural traits are listed at the bottom. Our cultural traits bring to life our core practice values. Both the cultural traits and practice values are intentionally left open to individual interpretation. Nurses are encouraged to reflect on how they see these traits and values reflected in their own nursing practice. 

Our goal in creating the PPM is to formally recognize the phenomenal work already being done by nurses at UVMMC and to guide our practice into the future. The PPM gives us a common language to share our story of nursing. We hope it will be impactful and unifying for all nursing team members’ professional practice now and in the future.