5/5/17 news article
Nurses recognized during national nurses week
A child’s nurse is his or her closest ally in healing. Nurses are there to provide not only the medical care necessary but also serve as a friend, a confidant, a champion. A nurse is a comforting face during a scary procedure and provides the high five after it’s over. A nurse is a hand to squeeze in the tough moments, a shoulder to lean on, the boost a child needs when it’s hard to keep going. Nurses are there to commiserate about the bad and celebrate the good.
On National Nurses Day, Dayton Children’s Hospital honors several outstanding nurses for their contributions. These excellence awards are given each year to nurses who were nominated by other hospital employees.
2016 Cameo of Caring Nursing Award
The Cameo of Caring award is the highest honor given during Nurses Week. Over the past 23 years, Erin Black displayed consistent commitment to high quality of care. She does a lot of work to improve systems within the ED and throughout the hospital.
In her new role as outreach nurse coordinator, she elevated the Emergency Department Outreach Program to new levels and worked diligently to make it extremely beneficial to patients and the community. She develops and revises processes to make follow-up care seamless for patients, orients new outreach nurses, facilitates care for complicated cases and collaborates with our clinics to make sure patients receive needed post-discharge care. Based on evidence of her research, additional staff has since been allocated.
She has co-authored an article that received national recognition at the Magnet conference in Atlanta in September 2016 and received the Jeanne M. Floyd award for outstanding paper. She has also authored a journal article (published in the Journal of Emergency Nursing), given national presentations and developed many poster presentations about the outreach nurse program.
She serves on the Patient Safety and Quality Council, Clinic Unit Council and the ED Unit Council. Erin is a pivotal member of the IMPACTS committee and is proactive about encouraging her colleagues to apply.
In addition, she is an instructor trainer for ENPC, training more than 25 nurses and instructors per year at Dayton Children’s and surrounding hospitals.
Erin continually advocates for patients at a unit level and systems level. In addition, she encourages professional growth in her colleagues. Congratulations Erin!
2016 Excellence in Nursing Award Winners
Outstanding New Graduate – Kara Hill, 3 West (no picture available)
Kara started at Dayton Children’s in August 2015 as a patient care assistant and became a nurse in June 2016. She has demonstrated a level of clinical judgment consistent with a nurse having years of experience. She has had to deal with countless high stress situations that would have made other new graduates (and even seasoned nurses) crumble under the pressure, but she has handled them with the poise and skill of someone who has been practicing for many years.
Kara goes above and beyond on a daily basis. She received recognition from families on many occasions because not only does she display superb critical thinking skills, but she is one of the sweetest and most compassionate people. She is universally loved by the patients and families she cares for because she treats them like they are her own family. If my child were in the hospital, I would pray to have a nurse like her.
Response to Diversity - Paulette Kolakowski, children’s home care - Tipp City
Paulette works with two families who have a cultural component to their care. In one case, which has a language barrier and strict dietary restrictions, she worked closely with the family, and their interpreter, to develop trust to find the right solutions.
In a second case, Paulette visited the family for three years in a challenging socio-economic area. She incorporates family decisions and ethnicity in collaborating to do what is best for the patient, developing a rapport despite the challenges. She places herself firmly as the family’s corner, as advocate and ally in the best care for their child.
Systems Thinking - Kari Roberts, hematology/oncology – Springfield
Kari has been instrumental in developing a tool to evaluate how to improve patient experience. She recognizes that patients and families have insight into what can improve their experience and considers those when identifying opportunities to improve services.
Consequently, she is spearheading the creation of a patient binder. In our ever-changing environment, she remains flexible and actively participates in many processes to improve care. These processes include fertility preservation and being a super user for the tower move. Her innovative ideas and positive attitude are refreshing. She is dedicated to improvement through research and implementation of evidenced-based practice.
Advocacy/Moral Agency – Wilma Lavy, radiology – Laura
Wilma has been employed at Dayton Children's for more than 25 years, working in various units. Her wealth of knowledge and experience provides a great foundation for improving processes and relationships, while championing new endeavors, and keeping care in medical imaging safe, compassionate and collaborative.
Despite her role as our resource nurse, she never forgets her roots in nursing, caring for patients in our department, often at the worst times of their lives. One such patient continues to seek her out each time he visits. She continues to be an inspiration to this department, to her fellow nurses and to Dayton Children's.
Caring Practices – Erin Petkus, pediatric intensive care unit – Dayton
Erin frequently goes out of her way to provide support for families including staying after her shift, making sure that families have nourishment and places to rest and checking on patients if they are transferred to another unit. She really understands how to make families find some comfort at the end of their child's life.
On several occasions during the past few years, she has been there to support families at the end of their child's life. Her kind, calming and very professional support is a great comfort to these famiiles.
Facilitator of Learning - Crystal Preston, newborn intensive care unit – Fairborn
When there was a recent increase in patients with tracheotomies, more was needed to provide care and discharge teaching for these families. Crystal stepped up and used her past experience from home care and working in the IMCU to organize and implement a tracheotomy class for families on the unit.
She put a lot of effort into creating a family-friendly PowerPoint complete with videos for teaching, as well as collecting supplies and setting up hands-on-skills stations for families to practice care.
Crystal goes out of her way to accommodate families, offering to come in for teaching even on evenings and weekends. Most importantly, she is compassionate, understanding and patient with families, putting them at ease and allowing them to feel comfortable with the learning process.
Clinical Inquiry – Holly Woods, Children’s Health Clinic – Dayton
Amazing, new ideas, a breath of fresh air. These are just a few adjectives that describe Holly. She is a joy to work with in the ambulatory clinics. Patients, families and staff rave about her tremendous amount of knowledge, passionate and caring actions.
She juggles many roles at Dayton Children's, not only does she work in several ambulatory departments, she excels in her role as chair of the ambulatory unit council.
In this role, she recently led a project based on the top four goals of the council, using an evidence based practice approach.
This study determined there was no evidence to support the continued use of table paper in exam rooms. Savings from discontinuing table paper results in $5,000/year for the ambulatory division.
With these results, she went to the classes to put the information the council gathered into a poster to display. The poster was accepted for presentation at the AAACN conference in New Orleans this May 2017.
Perhaps the most important part is she made the meetings fun, interactive and productive. So much is being spoken about the wonderful changes happening by 2020. Holly is doing her share to bring amazing changes for the ambulatory department.
Outstanding New Employee - Penny Campbell, surgery
Penny possesses excellent communication skills which she utilizes with her patients and their families. She always thanks the families for choosing Dayton Children's for their child's care. Her attitude is infectious! She walks around with a smile all of the time and her attitude is always pleasant.
Penny is an absolute joy! She is an experienced nurse who jumped into her role at Dayton Children's with an enthusiastic attitude and is a total team player. She is a perfect example of a patient advocate. She always provides a safe environment for her patients and will stand up for her patients if she feels potential harm could occur. She is an absolute professional who encompasses all of Dayton Children's values into her nursing practice.
Collaboration - Casey Lakes, orthopaedics – Dayton
Casey is always ready and willing to rise to the occasion, whether it is helping out the growing team in PM&R or stepping up to help other departments (ortho, sports medicine and nephrology to name a few).
She has been extremely helpful in helping to orient new physicians at Dayton Children's and the nurses too. Casey has a way of making children and families feel relaxed and at ease even during painful procedures like Botox injections.
Clinical Judgment - Janelle Harshberger, emergency department – Troy
Janelle consistently demonstrates exceptional clinical judgment in her daily practices. As charge nurse, she is often coordinating flow and treatment of 60 plus patients in the ED.
She has a global view of the department and masterfully coordinates patient placement within the ED and expedites patient transfers to inpatients units. Her critical thinking is top-notch. As charge nurse, she often manages multiple trauma teams and ancillary care requirements, ensuring each patient is getting necessary treatment.
As a trauma nurse leader (TNL) she is constantly reviewing trauma room processes. Janelle has assisted with trauma documentation and blood transfusion education. In her trauma nurse leader role, Janelle seamlessly directs and delegates care to critical patients. Her calmness in high stress situations often spreads throughout the room. Janelle truly embodies Clinical Judgment whether she is leading the ED team or leading in the trauma room.
