“As we entered this whole process, we entered it in a way that we thought would strengthen hospital nursing,” she said. “We found that the project ended up to be much larger. It influenced not only nursing but actually every department in each of the hospitals.”

For starters, the hospitals, which had come together as the Montana Consortium to implement the project, had to learn to communicate with each other. But now, as many hospitals are trying to form networks, consortium members find themselves ahead of the game, because one of their goals was building relationships between the institutions.

“We are finding that we, more and more, are sharing some of our resources,” Turley said. That includes the possible development of the regional staffing pool that hospitals hundreds of miles apart may pull from.

For nursing specifically, the grant also meant taking teamwork to heart. “What we had to do is really change the way we worked together. We got ‘stakeholders,’ ” said Turley, using a term popular among study participants that refers to giving care providers a voice. For instance, when changes were being made in a cardiac unit, meetings were held with the nursing staff and everybody else providing care.

According to Turley, the role of nurse has moved from providing care to managing nursing care and resources for a patient. “A physical therapist may be better to provide the care, but it’s the nurse’s role to make that decision,” she said.

The consortium has ceased to exist, but the hospitals are trying to share what they learned with other Montana hospitals.