Help us honor the unsung heroes of the state’s healthcare community – those who go above and beyond to comfort, heal and educate – bringing to light how critical nursing is to achieving comprehensive healthcare.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

Excellence in Nursing 2026 Nomination Form

Step 1 of 2

Nominator Information

Please take a moment to tell us about yourself and your contact information. (If you do not have a business name, work phone, or one of the fields does not apply below, etc. please enter "none" into the field.)

Name(Required)

First Last

Title(Required)

Company(Required)

Email(Required)

Phone(Required)

Nominee Information

Please provide the following details for your Excellence in Nursing Awards nominee.

Nominee's Name(Required)

First Last

Nominee's Title(Required)

Nominee's Hospital or Practice Name(Required)

Nominee's Email(Required)

Nominee's Phone(Required)

Nominee's Nursing Credentials
All nominees must have a valid New Hampshire nursing license (unless otherwise specified).

Nominee's CNO or Senior Nursing Leader contact information(Required)

Please include name, email and phone number

Please list all relevant degrees, license levels, certificates, etc.(Required)

Number of years nominee has been in the nursing field(Required)

Resume or CV(Required)

If you have your nominee's resume or CV available, please upload here.

Max. file size: 50 MB.

2025 Categories

Listed below are the 16 Nursing Categories we will be giving awards for the 2025 Excellence in Nurisng Awards. We realize that not all nursing specialties are represented. Please review the descriptions to find which category your nominee fits into best.

Academic Nurse Educator/Researcher: This category recognizes a nurse involved in education who works in academia in educating nurses at Associate, Bachelor, Masters or Doctorate levels. This category also recognizes a nurse involved in research who works to advance evidence-based practice defined as: “the integration of best research, clinical expertise, and patient values in making decisions about the care of individualized patients.”

Advanced Practice Nursing: This category recognizes an Advance Practice Registered Nurse working in any practice setting, including nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives.

Ambulatory Care Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working in the ambulatory care setting and includes nurses in care coordination, dialysis, clinic-based nursing, and telehealth nursing (based on Association Ambulatory Care Nursing defining characteristics).

Critical Care Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working in critical care, including intensive care, progressive care units (telemetry), perianesthesia care unit (PACU), or pediatric intensive care units.

Emergency and Critical Care Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working as an emergency nurse, flight nurse, urgent care nurse, intensive care unit, progressive care unit (telemetry), perianesthesia care unit (PACU), or pediatric intensive care unit.

Front line/Administrative Nursing: This category recognizes a front line or administrative nursing leader and includes nursing supervisors, clinical leaders, informal/project leaders (infection control, onboarding), or functional leaders (leaders without direct reports).

Gerontology Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working in gerontologic care or long-term care and includes nurses working in skilled nursing, assisted living, intermediate care, or dementia/memory care.

Hospice-Palliative Care: This category recognizes a nurse working in hospice-palliative care, and includes nurses working in hospice, skilled nursing/rehabilitation, assisted living, intermediate care, palliative care, or dementia/memory care.

Maternal-Child Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working in prenatal care, high-risk maternal-fetal care, intrapartum care, postpartum care, newborn special care, or newborn intensive care.

Medical Surgical Nursing: This category recognizes a nurse working in acute care settings and includes nurses working on in-patient units, including medical-surgical units, post-operative care units, wound care nursing, same day surgery or operating suites.

Professional Nurse Educator: This category recognizes a nurse involved in education who works to advance the knowledge, skills and professionalism required for patient-centered care. This includes active nursing education activities in environments such as: nursing professional development (organizational settings) and nurse education (clinical settings).

Nursing Informatics: This category recognizes a nurse involved in nursing informatics who works to “integrate nursing science with multiple information and analytical sciences to identify, define, manage and communicate data, information, knowledge and wisdom in nursing practice” (ANA - https://www.himss.org/resources/what-nursing-informatics).

Nurse Innovator/Entrepreneur and Quality Improvement: This category recognizes a nurse who is an innovator/entrepreneur (product developer or healthcare delivery), or quality improvement nurse.

Pediatric & School Nursing: This category recognizes nurses working with the pediatric population (primary care, in-patient pediatric setting, camp) or in a school setting.

Psychiatric & Mental Health Nursing: This category recognizes a psychiatric and mental health or substance use disorder, nurse working on in-patient units, or in community-based care.

Community/Public Health Nursing: This category recognizes nurses working in the community setting including home care, correctional nursing, occupational health, a public health department, or parish nursing.

Senior Nurse Leader: This category recognizes a senior nursing leader and includes nursing directors, vice presidents, or chief nursing officers.

Select A Category

Please select a category for nomination:(Required)

The New Hampshire Nurses Association’s Excellence in Nursing Task Force has developed the following information to facilitate the nomination process for the Excellence in Nursing Awards. The task force identified five areas of excellence that contain criterion specific to that specialty. The five areas of excellence include leadership, advocacy, ethics, communication and collaboration and professionalism. Each criterion should be evident within the nomination submitted.

For each of the awards, the task force has identified five criteria. Each criterion will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 for total possible score of 25 per nomination. The task force has also identified qualities that represent the five areas of criteria covered under each category.

Complete category overviews with judging rubrics can be found here.

Nomination Questions

Use only the nominee’s initials or the proper pronoun (he/she) when completing the form or attaching supporting documents to help reduce potential bias on the part of the judges.
Please provide brief descriptions/evidence of how this nominee demonstrates each of the following criterion.

Leadership(Required)

Describe how the nominee demonstrates leadership by leading within the organization or healthcare setting, leading others, and leading self.

Advocacy(Required)

Describe the nominee’s involvement in advocacy. For example, you might describe advocacy for patients, population groups, staff or the interdisciplinary team, the organization, healthcare and policy, or other instances where the nominee advocates to improve health care outcomes.

Communication and Collaboration(Required)

It is expected that all nurses who demonstrate excellence in practice would be effective in communication and collaboration. Describe how the nominee demonstrates this in practice.

Ethical Practice(Required)

Nurses have been identified as the most trusted professionals in the United States (Gallup poll, 2022). The Nursing Code of Ethics guides nursing practice. Describe how the nominee demonstrates strong ethical practices.

Professionalism(Required)

This measure addresses actions taken to uphold professional practice or to represent the nursing profession. Describe professional actions such as (but not limited to) the following examples: continuing education, membership and participation in a professional organization, certifications, presentations, and excellent skills that serve as role models.

Phone

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.