At Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara, professional governance is the foundation of nursing excellence and shared decision-making. Through the Voice of Nursing, we empower nurses at every level to influence practice, advance quality, and shape the future of patient care.
Aligned with the Kaiser Permanente Nursing Professional Practice Model, our governance structure fosters collaboration, innovation, and accountability, ensuring nursing standards reflect evidence-based practice and the values of our organization.
Our facility councils—Quality & Care Experience, Professional Advancement, Magnet & Communication, Practice, Research & Innovation, and Caritas—provide platforms for nurses to lead initiatives in quality improvement, research, education, and workforce well-being. By participating, nurses strengthen their professional voice, contribute to organizational goals, and enhance the patient’s experience.
Unit Practice Councils are the foundation of shared decision-making at the unit level, ensuring that frontline nurses have a strong voice in shaping workflows, improving patient outcomes, and advancing nursing excellence. These councils provide an opportunity for nurses to collaborate with peers, address unit-specific priorities, and implement evidence-based practices that enhance care delivery.
The Coordinating Council brings together unit chairs from across the medical center to serve as the central body for professional governance. This council oversees the nursing profession’s four core accountabilities—practice standards, competence, quality, and generation of nursing knowledge—ensuring alignment with organizational goals and advancing excellence in patient care.
Together, we create a culture of community where every nurse has a voice, and every voice matters.
The Caritas Council promotes and integrates Jean Watson’s Caring Science and Caritas Processes, along with Live Well, Be Well, and Healthy Workforce practices throughout the medical center. This council is dedicated to fostering a culture of compassion, holistic care, and well-being for patients and staff, aligning with Kaiser Permanente’s values of compassion, integrity, excellence, and teamwork. In 2025, the council spotlighted Caring Science principles during Nurses Week festivities, featuring a survey to better understand how our teams embrace these practices. Advocating for spaces that nurture well-being, the council has championed the creation of dedicated Caritas Rooms across nursing departments. As the number of these rooms grows, the council is now working to formalize basic requirements and maintenance guidelines, ensuring these spaces remain restorative and aligned with our commitment to caring science.
The Magnet & Communication Council educates and upholds Magnet principles across nursing departments, fostering a culture of nursing excellence. Its mission is to advance education and communication processes that support the Magnet framework, promote superior work environments, enhance job satisfaction, and create exceptional nurse-patient outcomes through collaboration and research. In 2025, the council launched several key initiatives, including the Magnet Matters informational flyer addressing Magnet myths and FAQs, a Magnet survey to understand perceptions of what it means to be on the Magnet journey, and the implementation of Magnet Boards in every department. These boards, maintained by Magnet champions, Voice of Nursing members, and leadership teams, serve as a hub for information sharing during Magnet Monday huddles, strengthening engagement and transparency throughout the Magnet journey.
The Practice, Research & Innovation Council is dedicated to promoting clinical inquiry, translating research, and applying evidence-based practice (EBP) to deliver high-quality patient care and empower the nursing profession. In 2025, the council advocated for deeper EBP knowledge among nurses and collaborated with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and the KP Santa Clara executive team to schedule an on-site EBP education event for early 2026. The council also provides RDO education and support, and has enhanced its SharePoint channel to include valuable resources such as project tracking tools, frameworks for guiding projects, council updates, and a mentoring Q&A section.
The Quality & Care Experience Council evaluates and implements best practices for nursing-sensitive indicators to improve patient outcomes and enhance the care experience. In 2025, the council finalized the design for new care boards to be placed in patient rooms. Once the initial draft boards are printed, a pilot study will be conducted to assess care experience scores and team utilization, ensuring that these boards effectively support communication and patient-centered care.
The Professional Advancement Council at KP Santa Clara is dedicated to fostering nurses’ professional growth through education, mentorship, and recognition. Its 2025 initiative, Roadmap to Certification, aims to increase the number of certified nurses by 1% by year-end through strategies such as updating HealthStream profiles, launching awareness campaigns, providing staff education, and addressing barriers to certification. To streamline these efforts, the council developed a one-stop flyer featuring QR codes for professional advancement resources and introduced a new instructional flow map for certification reimbursement, empowering nurses to strengthen clinical expertise and advance nursing excellence.