On September 28, 2023, BCEN was pleased to announce our 2023 National Certification Champion Award – Small Healthcare Organization category winner:
WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital
Ephrata, PA
What does being named a BCEN National Certification Champion mean to your organization and the communities you serve?
Being named a BCEN National Certification Champion demonstrates WellSpan’s mission to provide optimal patient outcomes by investing in nurses who are at the top of their profession and dedicated to lifelong learning. Certification promotes consumer confidence and contributes to better patient outcomes. Board certification assures patients and their families that the certified nurse is an expert in emergency nursing and one who stays on top of the latest advances and best practices to deliver the safest, most efficient, and highest quality care possible.
What sets nurses who have earned the CEN, CPEN, TCRN, CTRN, and/or CFRN apart in their daily practice and in their professional development trajectories?
Earning an emergency nursing certification shows a commitment to lifelong learning. It elevates a sense of accomplishment in knowing that you are a role model to your peers. Certified nurses lead in the department as preceptors, triage nurses, and charge nurses by modeling best practices and professionalism as they train and orient nursing students, new nurses, and transferring nurses, and lead the department in daily operations while being respected resources and mentors.
What are the positive outcomes you are seeing and tracking as the number of BCEN-certified nurses increases?
We have recently been able to double our number of certified emergency nurses. We know that research links specialty certification with improved patient outcomes. Certified nurses participate in unit, hospital, and system-level councils, with the goal of improving processes and impacting patient outcomes. WellSpan integrates certification with higher levels of nurse advancement on the clinical ladder. This intentionally links certification, advanced education, and retention into career advancement pathways.
What do you most want other organizations to know about why and how to support nursing specialty certification?
Investing in the support of nursing specialty certification is essential to demonstrating the knowledge and expertise of nurses and is an investment well worth any support of money or time. The easier we as organizations can make it for our nurses to study and test, the more likely they are to complete that process and to be successful in their certification journey.
WellSpan Ephrata’s Chief Nursing Officer had this to say:
“Being named a BCEN National Certification Champion demonstrates WellSpan’s mission to provide optimal patient outcomes by investing in nurses who are at the top of their profession and dedicated to lifelong learning,” said Orie Chambers, Chief Nursing Officer at WellSpan Ephrata Community Hospital. “We have recently been able to double our number of certified emergency nurses. We know that research links specialty certification with improved patient outcomes, allowing WellSpan to deliver the safest, most efficient, and highest quality care possible.”
In nominating Wellspan Ephrata Community Hospital for this award, ED Charge Nurse Jerry Brenner, MSN, RN, NRP, CEN said:
“We are making great strides towards increasing the number and percentage of certified nurses through multiple avenues with the support of system and hospital administration, management, and certified and aspiring nurses who truly believe that certification equals proof of clinical competence and expertise, and that certified nurses deliver better care for patients and community while being leaders and an inspiration to our staff.”
In describing WellSpan Ephrata’s commitment to publicly recognizing certified nurses, as well as nurses pride in displaying their national specialty certifications, Emergency Department Charge Nurse Pat Bria, BSN, RN, CEN, said:
“I sport a medley of items from my lanyard, yet the only one questioned by patients is my certification. They clearly care, and it provides them the sense of security and trust they so dearly desire in their time of vulnerability. Certified nurses provide better care. This is without debate.”
