When Moses Cone Health System’s Deborah Allen Grant has a problem that’s difficult to solve, she visits a patient. After the visit, the patient feels better, and so does she.

The vice president of nursing services for the health system, Grant has built her success on frequent, thoughtful interactions with other people — both patients and staff.

She likes to collaborate and build consensus. That’s how the Compassionate Companions program came about at Moses Cone. Joan Weffman, Moses Cone’s chief nursing officer, says nurses were worried about patients who were dying without friends or family.

Grant found a program that could work for the hospital. Now, people volunteer to sit with and reassure dying patients. It’s just one example of Grant’s way.

“She really does work to tap into the abilities of the people she works with, (to) play on their strengths,” Weffman says.

Grant’s caring for the people around her extends to the community, and always has, she says. On a given day, she might be in training with Leadership Greensboro, and then, after work hours, volunteering at her church in High Point, where she mentors a group of sixth-grade boys.

Grant says that listening makes her effective.

“That caring piece comes into it, the ability to listen and process and think before you react to things,” she says.

Leaders at Moses Cone have steadily promoted Grant since she came to the hospital in 1981. Along the way, she has taken assignments that best allow her to balance her personal and professional life.

She was promoted to assistant director of the cardiac/renal department when she had her first child. The evening hours allowed both parents to work and the baby to be at home. Since then, she has ascended through management positions at Moses Cone. She directed nursing services at Moses Cone and The Women’s Hospital of Greensboro before her last promotion to vice president in 2003.

In 2003, it was the right time for her to take on a more time-consuming challenge, Grant says. Her husband’s current job gives him more time at home with their 12-year-old son. An older daughter married last year.

“I needed to wait until my husband’s job was such that he was home more and had time to be with the kids,” Grant says.

As vice president of nursing, Grant led the effort to secure magnet status for the Moses Cone Health System. The designation, from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, signifies high quality in nursing care and includes all five hospitals in the system. Grant spent 12 months preparing the application. The final box of papers weighed in at 32 pounds, she says.

Her effort paid off. Less than 2 percent of individual hospitals in the United States have the designation, and Moses Cone is only the second five-hospital system to receive it.

Grant says her secret to success is simple.

“I’m a positive personality, always looking for the good and positive things,” she says.