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Cornerstone Hospice and Palliative Care has received an Excellence in Program Innovation Award - Clinical Practice from the Florida Hospice and Palliative Care Association (FHPCA) for its Nurse Onboarding Program. It is one of six hospice agencies across Florida to receive Awards of Excellence at the recent FHPCA 2016 Forum.

The program was developed in April 2017 to help educate and acclimate new nurses to the hospice environment while familiarizing the new employees to Cornerstone Hospice's internal processes and culture. The new nurses shadow an experienced Cornerstone Hospice nurse as he or she interacts with patients, family and other members of the Cornerstone interdisciplinary team, which may include home health aides, social workers, chaplains, bereavement counselors and physicians.

"We had key objectives in developing the Cornerstone Hospice nurse onboarding program," said Nadia Soulouque, MBA/HRM, PHR, SHRM-CP, Director of Training and Professional Development. "We want to ensure new hires are comfortable working in a hospice setting and that they become proficient with the necessary documentation required by Cornerstone Hospice and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We also wanted to facilitate an early sense of camaraderie for the new hires and enhance job satisfaction."

"We are in a highly competitive environment where there is a nursing shortage across the board. Combined with Cornerstone Hospice's significant and steady increase in our daily patient census, it is critical that we recruit skilled and compassionate nurses to care for our patients," said Chuck Lee, President and CEO of Cornerstone Hospice. "Since implementation of the Cornerstone Hospice Nurse Onboarding Program, turnover of nurses has declined 18 percent. Ultimately, these positive results mean our patients and family receive a higher level of care in all of our coverage areas."

The FHPCA Excellence in Program Innovation Award recognizes services and programs provided by a hospice organization that demonstrate the power of creativity and ingenuity to impact the practice and the community.