Associate Chief Nurse
VA Northern California Health Care System
Sacramento, CA
Raymond Phillips, Ph.D, RN, MS, CNS, CCRN-R, is the Chief Nurse for Inpatient Nursing and Nursing Research at the Veterans Administration Northern California Health Care System (VANCHCS), an integrated health-care delivery system that serves more than 375,000 Veterans across 17 counties. In this position, Dr. Phillips is responsible for establishing, maintaining, and providing oversight for the delivery of nursing care and management of nursing personnel and clinical resources for acute care. Moreover, Dr. Phillips continually creates, fosters and sustains a practice environment where nursing research and evidence-based practice are integrated into both the delivery of nursing care and the framework for nursing administration decision making.
He is also featured as a portrait of nursing leadership for the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at University of California, Davis, and serves as a mentor for Community Connections, a year-long School of Nursing field-work course which partners master's degree students with mentors from regional organizations to seek solutions to complex, system-level health-care problems. Moreover, he serves on the school's Regional Advisory Group. Prior to his appointment as Chief Nurse, he earned a Ph.D in Nursing from the University of California, San Francisco where he was a predoctoral fellow and was selected for a National Institutes of Health/Fogarty International Center scholarship in India. Dr. Phillips was selected to participate in the 2012 International Council of Nurses-Burdett Foundation's Global Nursing Leadership Institute (GNLI), which is based in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the first nurse within the Veterans Health Administration to receive such a global honor. He earned a master's degree in critical care nursing from the University of California, San Francisco and his undergraduate degree in nursing from St. John's University in Minnesota.
He has had a career of service in the military all over the globe for most of his career, first in the Army Nurse Corps, and subsequently in the Navy Nurse Corps, with experience as a clinician, researcher, educator, administrator, organizer, advocate and change agent. Commander Phillips retired from the US Navy with 20 years of service. His last military assignment was as Director, Nursing Services for the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan.