Senior Vice President, Patient Care Services & Chief Nurse Executive
Rosemary (Rosi) Wurster, DNP, RN, MPH, NEA-BC, CEN, is senior vice president, patient care services and chief nurse executive. With a clinical background in emergency nursing, she joined Bayhealth in July 2022.
Guided by the high standards of the American Nurses Association and the American Nurse Credentialing Center, she nurtures and champions a culture of excellence in nursing practice at Bayhealth. In her multi-faceted role, Wurster leads the organization, coordination, administration, and operational planning not only for the Nursing department, but also for the Pharmacy and Staff Development departments, in addition to surgical services, women’s and children’s services, and emergency practice.
Wurster helps to lead several initiatives at Bayhealth, including Capacity Management, Magnet® ongoing designation, Operational Excellence, and Interprofessional Wellness, as well as the community initiative 302 Food Rescue. She has been instrumental in helping to reduce hospital and observation length of stay and boarding time, boost hiring of new nurses, support shared governance, create an employee idea program to generate cost savings, and develop flexible work options for staff.
What Wurster enjoys most about her work at Bayhealth is the people — the dedicated and caring staff. She also loves that in her role she can represent patient care services at the highest levels of the organization. Prior to her role at Bayhealth, she held operational leadership roles in inpatient, outpatient, and emergency care settings and has served in programmatic leadership roles at the system level. Her practice environments have spanned community hospitals as well as large, academic medical centers.
Winner of a Nightingale Award of Pennsylvania and recipient of other accolades, Wurster has also been a nominee and finalist for several others. She has published and presented on various leadership topics including professional practice model development and patient experience in emergency departments. Her research and practice interests include nurse leader development and wellness, racial and ethnic diversity among nurse leaders, and systems thinking in quality and safety performance improvement.
While a member of the American Organization of Nurse Leaders, Delaware Organization of Nurse Leaders, and Delaware Nurses Association, Wurster also contributes her nursing leadership expertise to three Delaware institutions. She serves as an advisory board member in the departments of Nursing at the University of Delaware, Delaware Technical Community College, and Wilmington University. She is also a capstone preceptor for graduate students in the Master of Public Health and nursing leadership programs at Villanova University, Drexel University, Loyola University, and Immaculata University. In addition, she is a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and the American College of Healthcare Executives.
A Doctor of Nursing Practice (conferred by Drexel University), Wurster earned both her Master of Public Health and Bachelor of Science in nursing at West Chester University. She is a board-certified advanced nurse executive and a certified emergency nurse.
Wurster is committed to supporting the emotional health of communities and of women, having coached women and couples, and currently raises resources for mentoring programs for high school students through her participation in the youth organization YoungLife. In her downtime, she can be found reading a book, walking her chocolate lab, Gauge, with her family, or planning her next garden adventure.
Reach out to Rosi Wurster via LinkedIn.