Verity Healthcare

Three weeks after Columbus-based OhioHealth named Paula Stabler, MSN, RN, president of Van Wert (Ohio) Hospital, she shared insights with Becker’s about her profession journey and the evolving appreciation of nursing leaders. 

“I imagine I am the fourth CNO to get promoted inside OhioHealth to the president’s function, after which we simply had one other CNO get promoted to chief working officer inside OhioHealth,” Ms. Stabler mentioned. “To see nursing management develop, I find it irresistible, as a result of we do lots. I feel it is lastly getting seen how a lot nursing is concerned in operations and the way they contact somewhat little bit of every little thing.”

For instance, as undertaking lead for Van Wert Hospital’s Ambulatory Stroll-In Heart, she coordinated with different departments, building crews, and native fireplace and police departments on the constructing’s orientation. 

On one other stage, a nurse supervisor of an inpatient unit should perceive and navigate the operations of the emergency division, radiology, labs and different areas affecting affected person care. This depth and breadth of information is starting to be acknowledged extra broadly within the hospital business, she mentioned.

Leaving to be taught, returning to guide

Ms. Stabler first joined Van Wert in 2007 as a PRN emergency division nurse and home supervisor. Just a few years later, she grew to become the interim, then everlasting, ED director. Throughout her tenure, she was closely concerned in catastrophe preparedness and served on the 911 board. 

As she superior in management, she set her sights on a long-term objective.

“I knew that I wished to do senior management and finally be the president of Van Wert Hospital,” she mentioned, “as a result of it’s my neighborhood hospital, and I simply have an enormous ardour for our neighborhood and our sufferers.”

She left Van Wert for 2 years to work as ED director for Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind., a for-profit hospital. There, she discovered to function inside a well being system, from company to regional to native ranges, which ready her when Van Wert Hospital joined OhioHealth. 

“I at all times mentioned once I left Van Wert, I might be again,” she mentioned, laughing. “[If] there’s a possibility for me, I shall be again. However I felt like I wanted to go to develop and be taught extra.”

That chance got here when she returned as Van Wert Hospital’s COO and CNO. The hospital joined OhioHealth because the well being system’s 14th hospital in 2023, and Ms. Stabler served as CNO for 2 years. In early 2025, then-hospital president Pleasure Bischoff transitioned to OhioHealth’s vice chairman of enterprise shared companies, opening the door for Ms. Stabler’s promotion. 

Management and household help

Ms. Stabler credit her success to help from OhioHealth’s hospital presidents — together with her mentor, Wendy Elliott, president of OhioHealth Southeastern Medical Heart in Cambridge — and the unwavering help of her household.

“I do not understand how I did what I did,” she mentioned, referring to by no means having missed a dance competitors or a soccer recreation. However when late nights or weekend work known as, her kids — now 22, 25 and 29 years previous — understood the sacrifices required. 

“One factor that I at all times go by is — and I will get known as out if I do not stick with what I preach to my leaders — it is God first, it is household second after which it is work,” she mentioned. “My management fashion may be very a lot agency … however variety.”

Simply as she has leaned on her household {and professional} community, Ms. Stabler is obsessed with mentoring and training others.

“On the finish of the day, the center of healthcare is our associates,” she mentioned. “They do every little thing. I do not care what function you’re employed on this hospital, that’s the coronary heart of healthcare: our associates. Permitting to empower and make individuals really feel valued goes miles.”