In May this year at a special luncheon to celebrate International Nurses Day, the Foundation was proud to launch the Nursing Excellence at St Vincent’s Fund to raise $6 million to support our St Vincent’s Nurses. The new Nursing Excellence at St Vincent’s campaign will strengthen nursing workforce capability to meet the health challenges of the future through nurse education, leadership and scholarship initiatives and to further enhance a culture of continuous quality improvement through clinical research across all areas of nursing at our Hospitals.
Guests at the event applauded Mr John Cunningham AM SCM and Mrs Margaret Cunningham’s announcement, on behalf of the JW & M Cunningham Foundation, that they would establish the Cunningham Nursing Leadership Academy with a grant of $1 million. “Medicine is developing so quickly that nurses need to be trained to adapt to work in this environment,” said Mrs Cunningham to attendees. “We envisage that through this leadership academy, our senior nurses will develop their own skills to assist them to lead and manage nursing teams in day to day clinical practice. We want these senior nurses to be leaders who will influence other nurses by leading by example. We can’t wait for this program to start and are pleased to be able to provide this support.”
St Vincent’s Nurses work in a highly complex, rapidly changing and evolving environment and are members of broad interdisciplinary teams. With your support, we hope to provide the funds needed to give them the opportunities that will support our mission of providing exceptional and compassionate care for all our patients.
We give enormous thanks to all our Nursing Excellence supporters to date with particular thanks to Clare Handbury and the Nursing Excellence Committee, Barbara Jarry, Ray and Bernadette Wilson, Gretel Ainsworth, Peter and Rae Fletcher, Jackie Waterhouse, the Carla Zampatti Foundation and Felicity Youl.