How to Write a Strategic Plan for Delivery of Nursing Care

Professionals in all fields make the mistake of writing strategic plans filled with noble goals that lack actionable steps. A strategic plan is a visionary document, but it's also practical. A nursing strategic plan should not only describe ideal patient-nurse and patient-family relationships, but should also explain how the staff plan to take their practice to the next level. Good strategic plans become valuable touchstones that managers and staff can consult when making decisions.

Instructions

• 1

  Determine a timeline for your strategic plan. If you set your sights too far in the future, you won't be able to determine all the steps to get where you'd like to be, and the nursing staff's goals may change before you meet your plan's objectives. On the other hand, thinking too short term means the plan can't serve its purpose as a visionary document to guide staff choices. Both the Niagara Health System and Hartford Hospital in Connecticut use three year time frames, so consider a similar timeline for your plan.

• 2

  Call a department meeting and talk about what goals the nursing staff would like to work on. Perhaps they want to improve communication with families, or they want to be able to provide patients with better service and information related to a specific illness or condition. Write down the ideas and ask the group to brainstorm tangible methods of measuring progress.

• 3

  Distill the group's list into three to five patient service goals. For example, the staff at Hartford Hospital aimed for open, honest communication with patients and families and a level of service that exceeded family and patient expectations. You might also want to make your staff more competent in a certain area of practice, or have them strive for meaningful interactions with patients.

• 4

  Look at your goals and decide what benchmarks you'll use to measure your progress and what actions you'll take to ensure improvement. For example, at your hospital, exceeding service expectations might manifest as fewer patient complaints and more compliments. If you don't have a method for recording patient feedback, you'd have to introduce one. If your hospital specializes in certain conditions, like cancer, improving care might mean continuing education courses in the hospital's specialty for recent hires.

• 5

  Prepare your strategic plan. Write an overall mission statement that ties all of your goals together. For example, "Evergreen Hospital's nursing staff are committed to delivering patient care that exceeds expectations through continuous learning and compassionate administration of services." Put general goals in large, bold font with planned steps and sub-goals in bullet points underneath.