Nursing Spotlight: Rajanee Singh, RN, BSN, MSN, Director of Professional Practice

Jupiter Medical Center (JMC) employees come to us from many walks of life and all areas of the world. Their common bond is their pursuit of quality patient care, and Rajanee Singh is on a quest to realize that goal.

As the Director of Professional Practice, she is leading JMC's mission toward achieving Magnet Status. Magnet Status is a term used to describe excellence in nursing, a designation by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). By meeting certain standards and guidelines set forth by the ANCC, this designation shows JMC has quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. This provides consumers with the ultimate benchmark to measure the quality of care they can expect to receive while in our care.

Achieving Magnet Status for nursing will help us meet our ultimate goal of becoming a top 100 national hospital. Our program is called Navigating to Excellence through Pearls of Wisdom.

Rajanee is working hard to help our hospital achieve that status by working directly with the entire nursing staff to understand and meet the quality indicators and standards of nursing practice.

"Through our shared governance councils, we are working on improving our clinical practice by looking at evidence-based practices," she said. "We are working hard to provide a quality environment for our patients and creating a great work environment for our nurses. Overall, I think that delivering quality patient care and retaining our nurses is the most important thing." 

In addition to her role in leading us toward Magnet Status, Rajanee is also responsible for ensuring our quality indicators are reported to the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI), a database of nursing-sensitive indicators. This program, an initiative of the American Nurses Association, is the only database containing data collected at the nursing unit level.

A Registered Nurse since 1990, Rajanee brings experience in nursing management, instruction, research and clinical areas for Medical/Surgical, Burn, Critical Care and Cardiopulmonary Step Down and Rehabilitation, in both an inpatient and outpatient setting.

Rajanee's journey to JMC was anything but a direct route. Originally from Guyana, South America, she moved to the Bronx in New York City when she was six-years-old. Her family then moved to Queens and then Long Island. Eventually, she and her family left the north and moved to Georgia, and finally found their way to South Florida.

She attended the Borough of Manhattan Community College where she received her Associate of Applied Science degree, then received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from The State University of New York Health Science Center. She then went on to receive her Nurse Executive Master's Degree from Columbia University, and is currently pursuing her Doctorate Degree in Nursing Practice from Florida Atlantic University.

Family has always been important to her success. Since she can remember, Rajanee said her family has always been instrumental in helping her to achieve her goals in life. Rajanee's own family - her husband and three children (including a set of twins) - provides her with her most quality time away from work. "My best time is spent with my family, in the pool or just down time at home," she said.

As for nursing, she said she was originally attracted to the field because of the humanizing aspect of taking care of patients. She said she always felt her calling was to make an impact on the nursing practice. "My main goal here at JMC is to improve on the nursing practice so we can deliver excellent care to the community that will impact our physicians, nurses and everyone around us," she said.

Since coming to JMC last October, Rajanee said she immediately noticed a different atmosphere compared to her previous employment experience. She said, "The nurses here at JMC are very involved. They are open and give quality patient care, and that's what I love about JMC. I love the people here. I wake up every morning and I'm happy to come to work. There are always new challenges and every day is exciting."