Ringgold Resident Graduates from the Johnson & Johnson - Wharton Program for Nurse Executives
6/27/2007

Keith Jennings
706.272.6118

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - Janice Keys, vice president and chief nursing officer at Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Ga., 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. Keys was one of 39 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, Canada, Australia, Japan and Brazil.

The Johnson & Johnson - Wharton Fellows Program has been enhancing the leadership capabilities of nurse executives for 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.

“Due to the tremendous marketplace pressures in today’s health care organizations, the voice of the clinical professional can easily be lost,” said Gregory P. Shea, Ph.D., academic director, Johnson & Johnson - Wharton Fellows Program. “This program helps nurse executives become well-versed in a wide variety of organizational, financial and marketplace issues. By strengthening their management and leadership capabilities, they can more readily assume the role of full strategic partner with other health care executives.”

The Wharton School, in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, 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.

“As the healthcare environment changes, it is imperative that nurse executives focus on creating structures and processes that yield high quality care for our patients while improving patient outcomes,” said Keys. “One challenge in the healthcare field is to provide leadership that empowers the caregiver at the bedside to be a part of the decision-making process in both the clinical and financial manners.”

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