Project 2

The ECU Health Nursing 3-Year Strategic Plan:

Co-Designing the Future of Nursing

Project Description

Our plan isn’t just a strategy; it’s the future. The ECU Health Nursing 3-Year Strategic Plan was co-designed with and for nurses, leveraging design thinking to create a roadmap that reflects the real experiences, challenges, and aspirations of frontline caregivers.

The Journey: From Insight to Action

Our journey began by listening. Hundreds of nurses across ECU Health shared their experiences through focus groups and engagement surveys through the APEX research, helping us uncover pain points, opportunities, and the systemic changes needed to support nursing’s future.

We engaged nurses, leaders, and stakeholders in an iterative, co-creative process to design a strategy, ensuring that the solutions were practical, meaningful, and deeply embedded in real-world nursing practice.

A Strategy Rooted in Human-Centered Design

Through a design thinking approach, the strategy is focused around three core pillars:

• Our Team: How might we support and develop our nurses to practice at the top of their license and thrive in their environments?

  • Career pathways, leadership development, reducing overburden, workforce innovation.

• Our Community: How might we strengthen partnerships within the community to improve patient care and nursing research and education?

  • Philanthropy, community outreach, research initiatives, academic collaborations, and patient-centered care models.

• Our Culture: How might we create an environment where nurses feel valued, heard, and empowered?

  • Professional recognition, well-being programs, shared decision-making, innovation spaces.

From Ideas to Implementation

This plan isn’t just a vision; it’s an actionable roadmap with a clear implementation plan created with a phased approach to drive change:

• Year 1: Laying the Foundation—Establishing essential programs and building infrastructure.

• Year 2: Building on the Foundation—Expanding initiatives, refining care models, strengthening culture.

• Year 3: Expansion & Innovation—Scaling transformation, advancing research, amplifying nursing’s voice.

By integrating human-centered research, co-design workshops, and continuous iteration, this strategy ensures that ECU Health Nursing evolves alongside its people and communities, not just as a static document but as a living framework for change.

Key Takeaways

• Designed by nurses, for nurses—a deeply collaborative strategy driven by frontline insights.

• A Future-Ready Framework—Aligning workforce, leadership, and care models with healthcare’s evolution.

• Beyond a plan, a transformation—clear execution, accountability, and impact measurement to ensure sustained change.