Vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer of Aspirus North Division retires

Lori Knitt, vice president of patient care and chief nursing officer of Aspirus North Division, decided to retire last month. 

Her career in health care spanned more than 38 years and her work at Aspirus Health the last four years may have been the most rewarding for her.

“Four years ago, our North Division nursing leadership team was in transition, with vacancies at every level — from supervisors to directors,” Knit said in her Jan. 23 resignation letter to her staff at the Aspirus North Division. “By intentionally placing the right people in the right roles, the division stabilized. Lessons learned through the pandemic — especially the importance of flexibility — were embraced, and collaboration became a daily practice rather than an aspiration. You are the heart of Northwoods healthcare. I am deeply grateful to have worked alongside you.”

Knitt grew up in Milwaukee, but was a summer resident in St. Germain. She met her husband while on the Plum Ski-ters water skiing team. 

She said she comes from a family of teachers, but she didn’t end up following that path when she attended Alverno College in Milwaukee to become a nurse. 

Knitt said Alverno College not only taught her what it means to be a nurse, but the school also taught her how to be a nurse leader. 

“So right from my bachelor’s degree, it was a really solid foundation of leadership and nursing education,” she said. 

Knitt married her husband around that time, she said, who was a sheriff’s deputy for the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department. 

She spent a “big chunk” of her career in the Sheboygan area. 

“But my husband had his roots in the Northwoods,” Knitt said. 

When her husband retired from the sheriff’s department, she said, they decided to move up to the Northwoods to help care for family. 

“Aurora Sheboygan, where I was, was changing leadership and it was just a transition so it was a good time for me to say I’m going to leave Aurora Sheboygan and go to the Northwoods,” Knitt said. “And my intent was to most likely retire or find something part time even at that time, but I had spoken to Aspirus probably about six months prior to that, just to let them know ‘Hey, I’m coming back to the Northwoods’ and at that time, they said ‘Hey, we might have something as we buy these hospitals from Ascension.’ So they reached out to me and offered me the position of the chief nursing officer of the four North Division hospitals.”

There were a number of accomplishments Knitt felt she and her staff achieved in the four years she spent with Aspirus Health. 

Those accomplishments, in no particular order, include: 

• “Increased utilization of technology; we used to count IV drips ( by gravity), so from IV pumps to robotic surgery, technology has changed, but the intellectual capacity needed by nurses to process/problem solve remains. There is more data to process. I believe processing, filtering, prioritizing the right care — the mental bandwidth needed — is often underestimated. 

• “Documentation, from paper to electronic — ease of access to information. 

• “Hospitalists, readily available 24/7, no longer calling physicians (at 2 or 3) in the morning.

• “Staff turnover (not necessarily bad) but workers do not stay working in the same place for 45 years.

• “The opportunities in nursing are endless — lateral moves, upward moves … only nurse midwives in 1970s now NPs, PAs.

• “Shorter length of stay, with higher acuity patients in the hospital.

• “Patient oriented focus not nurse/MD driven.

• “Large systems instead of small community hospitals & all the pros & cons of that.

• “Safety changes … as society has changed … increase in violence in our hospitals, increased self defense training, more locked doors.

• “Wellness initiatives and all the advances in cancer, cardiac, etc., fancy chemo, bone marrow transplants, endovascular aneurysm repair.” 

“So, throughout my four years just helping stabilize the nursing leadership position at Aspirus was really absolutely needed and I’m really proud of that work today,” Knitt said.

Another aspect of her career she said she felt proud of was her ability to always connect with nurses “at the bedside.”

“And understanding what was on their plate and how to advocate for them so that we could create the safest environment for those nurses to practice,” Knitt said. “So never losing sight of what that bedside nurse actually needed to actually provide the best care.”

She said her family is dedicated to the Northwoods community. 

“If I was going to live in this community, I wanted to understand where to go, where not to go, who to see, who not to see and help, really … establish … good quality health care in the North Division,” Knitt said. “Because this is where my family, my neighbors, my friends (are). … And I’m really proud of that.”

She added she found out the Northwoods “absolutely” have good, quality health care.

Knitt listed all the certifications and recognitions the hospitals of the Aspirus North Division were able to obtain and how that really is a testament to the good work her and her colleagues did.

“So under my four years, three of the four hospitals have become trauma certified hospitals,” she said. “Three of the four hospitals have achieved stroke certification. So that to me is what I am really proud of, of making sure we indeed have high quality health care in the Northwoods.”

Knitt said she will “totally” miss her career in health care.

But she does plan to “take better care” of herself during her retirement, as well as travel with her husband and spend more time with her grandchildren. 

“(I) wish to thank all of the dedicated front line staff, and the leaders that support them. Healthcare is not an easy industry,” Knitt said. “(Also I want to thank) Teri Theiler — Aspirus North Division President — for her dedication and integrity (and) Dr Andrew Weber — for his partnership and leadership of the Hospitalists; his role of facilitating the collaboration between providers and nursing is to be commended.”

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].