Ellen is an excellent nurse because she has dedicated her time at Children's Colorado towards educating herself and her fellow staff members. Both in her daily practice and from a systems stand point Ellen has enhanced multiple methods for the ambulatory Neurology nurse to increase their knowledge base and to provide better care for our patients. Ellen is a CNIII and serves as the DEC of our department. In this role Ellen is responsible for assessing the learning needs of staff, maintaining competencies, new hire orientation, and evaluation of standards of care practice. She has really blossomed in this role as taken great ownership for her personal growth and expansion of Neurology knowledge. Not only has she focused on our department, but she has included the network of care sites in all of our education to ensure that we (as Neurology nurses) provide the same high quality care at any site from Anschutz campus, to North, St Joe's, Parker, and South campus. This collaboration has been a starting point to increase our consistency as a service line and has contributed to the communication happening between campuses.

Ellen has also taken additional steps by working with the Epilepsy Foundation to get Seizure educational backpacks to our department for distribution to new diagnosis seizure patients. In addition, Ellen attended the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses conference this year. Not only is Ms. Smith a dedicated employee, but she is passionate about the quality of life for Epilepsy patients as evidenced by her annual volunteer work at the Epilepsy Camp for children held here in Colorado each summer.

To top this all off, Ellen is one of the most positive, and upbeat people to work with. She is professional, has an incredible sense of humor and keeps the atmosphere light and fun while at work which we all know can come in very handy during a rough shift.