Eleanor is our clinical nurse specialist and while it is a standard for her to go above and beyond in her role as clinical educator, she often truly does exceed even the alreadyhigh expectations thatwe as the staff on 4W have come to appreciate her for. In addition to frequently speaking at conferences related to innovative care in front of multidisciplinary audiences, she has been a front runner for yearsin our push to improve patient outcomes through practices such as not drawing blood off of central lines, aggressive early mobilization of critical and ventilated patients, and morerecentlyin reducing our unit acquired pressure ulcer rates through our "pledge to wedge" campaign.
Elly is frequently seen on the unit on her day off, coming in on weekends and nights either to tie up loose ends related to patient outcome data or to educatestaff on new equipment or new procedures.
She requires all SICU staff to take part in annual competencies to maintain our technical prowesswith complex and sometimes confusing therapies and equipment, and recently, when a need was identified for further education regarding onespecific invasive therapy because of a large influxof new staff, she took the initiative to bring in an educatorfrom thedevice sales department to provide several in-services, over multiple shifts to make sure that anyone with questions had the opportunity to get educated and learn how to trouble-shoot effectively and safely.