Page 14 - Silver Linings Issue4

Making a Career of Caring.
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Sharon Kowalchuk,
RN, DNP, sets high standards and has high expectations, both for herself and her staff. She firmly believes that high-quality care comes from people who are constantly working to improve their skills and knowledge.
Kowalchuk is the Chief Nursing Officer at Silver Hill Hospital and has led the nursing staff here since 2013. Although she will retire from her long nursing career later this year, she leaves
a powerful legacy of caring for others and encouraging the advancement of countless individual nurses’ careers.
“She sees herself, I think, as a leader who is there to nurture, develop, teach, mentor and coach her staff. She has supported
so many people in their career development over the last decades,” says Michael Groat, Ph.D., Silver Hill’s Chief Clinical Officer. “She is a shepherd of her staff and that makes her really stand out. She has excelled with
her nurturance of generations of nurses.”
Sharon adds, “When I got here, there was very little professional development and many of our nurses just had their initial degrees. I said, this isn’t going
to work. I got more money for education, and we now have 81 percent of our nurses with a bachelor’s degree or better.”
Sharon also pushed, and continues to push, for more frequent in- house nursing symposiums on campus. She leads by example