August, 2002

Sample has the distinction of being the first nurse appointed to the nurse-at-large position on the JCAHO Board of Commissioners. She has served as a member of the executive committee, the standards and survey committee and chaired the accreditation committee. She also served as the ANA representative on the JCAHO Hospital Accreditation program from 1986-1993. Sample recently facilitated the JCAHO Round table on the nursing shortage and its nursing summit: "Solving the Nursing Shortage: Strategies for the Workplace and the Profession".

She was a pioneer in the development of 'organizational by-laws" to promote shared governance concepts in the creative utilization of clinical nurse specialists at Vanderbilt University Hospitals in Nashville, (1972), and at Harborview Hospital in Seattle, WA (1976), where she was the nurse executive. At the University of Michigan Medical Center Ann Arbor (1983), she developed the corporate nurse executive position, providing leadership during a major transition to the new hospital.

Returning to Vermont in 1990, Sample created the Center for Nursing, a collaborative venture with the University of Vermont School of Nursing and the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont. She provided leadership in the implementation o f the Robert Wood Johnson/Pew Charitable Trust grant for the Vermont Nursing Initiative.

Sample received honorary doctorates from Norwich University and the University of Vermont (UVM). Sample served on the Governors' Blue Ribbon Task Force o n the Nursing Shortage and currently serves on the UVM School of Nursing advisor y board and as Chair of the Board of the Nightingale Institute for Health and the environment.

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