In July 2025, 10 nursing managers and specialists from the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine (FAHZU) traveled to Stanford Health Care (SHC) in the United States for a training program. This visit is part of FAHZU's plan to learn from top hospitals around the world and bring back the best practices to improve care for patients.

What We Learned at Stanford

The team came back with important lessons in three main areas:

1.Creating a Culture of Excellence: Stanford is working to earn its fifth Magnet® award, which recognizes the best nursing programs. Our team learned how giving nurses more independence, caring for their well-being, and involving them in decision-making leads to better care for patients and happier, stronger nursing teams.

2.Putting Patients and Staff First: Stanford shows care and compassion in everything they do. They design hospital units to help nurses respond faster to patients. They create quiet spaces where patients and staff can rest. Our nurses saw how good leadership, thoughtful policies, and daily actions all work together to create a caring environment.

3.Using Technology That Actually Helps: The team visited Stanford's nursing technology department and learned how they improve their systems. Nurses help design the computer systems they use every day. New tools like AI and monitoring devices are chosen to make nurses' work easier and keep patients safer—not just because they're new.

At the end of the visit, our nurses gave a presentation to Stanford's Chief Nursing Officer, Mr. Dale Beatty. They shared how they've already used ideas from their first visit to Stanford to improve care at FAHZU. The Stanford team was very impressed.

Moving forward, FAHZU Nursing will keep working with leading hospitals like Stanford, Mayo Clinic, and Singapore General Hospital. We will take what we learn from these partnerships and use it to improve nursing care at our hospital.