On Ethical Leadership In April, Jennifer Graves ’87, ’92 MSN, the regional nursing executive of Kaiser Permanente Washington, was asked to staff a new COVID-19 assessment and recovery facility with aroundthe-clock coverage for those in the King County, WA, area experiencing homelessness. She didn’t hesitate. In mere weeks she had the staff and processes in place. A creative thinker, a listener, a leader, a proud mom, and a lover of the game of basketball, Graves believes her University of Portland education prepared her for the challenge of the moment.
FOR MANY YEARS I wasn’t able to articulate the value of a liberal arts education. But right now, particularly for nursing and particularly around COVID-19, I think about the value of the liberal arts education, about how I had courses in philosophy and ethics, how I feel very grounded in ethical decision-making. We’ve had conversations about: What if we actually have to go into crisis standards of care like other places have had to? What if we have to make difficult decisions about who might get resources and who might get equipment and who might not?
I look at my classes about religion and faith and how that has really informed me as a nurse and helped me be much more attentive to all aspects of a person versus just the biological, the physical pieces. I’m much more effectively able to address people’s spiritual health and people’s mental health. In the School of Nursing in particular, I valued the focus on both clinical excellence and also looking at teaching nurses to be leaders. Nurses are leaders. They’re leaders today in health care, but I see them as a much more integral and key piece of the effective health care systems of the future. More than 30 years ago, having classes on leadership and the basics of business, along with the humanities, was not the norm, but that was an expectation of University of Portland, and I look back on the curriculum, and I think it definitely prepared me well both for the clinical aspects of my career and also the leadership aspects. My professors were career shapers. —Jennifer Graves
SUMMER 2020
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