I am honored and excited to write this nomination for Jill Wegener, MSN, RN, CCRN for the DAISY Nurse Leader Award.  I have been fortunate to work with Jill for over 18 years in both clinical and leadership roles at more than one institution. We have worked together in the pediatric intensive care unit, at patient bedsides, at staff meetings, in academic conferences, and in the boardroom. Jill has the unique ability to connect with bedside nurses, physicians, healthcare executives, and Community Board members. She exhibits all the traits of a superb clinician while also maintaining the ability to see the big picture.

When I first started working with Jill, I was the director of the pediatric ICU at Maimonides Medical Center. Jill arrived at Maimonides as a clinical nurse specialist but quickly became the go-to person for all complex issues. Whether these issues were with a particularly difficult to treat patient, a nurse that was struggling, a family facing a tragedy, or a house-wide ICU monitor upgrade, Jill was the person everyone turned to for guidance and leadership.  During her time at Maimonides, Jill pursued a Masters in Nursing in order to further hone her leadership skills.

I was fortunate enough to join Jill again 10 years ago at Blythedale Children's Hospital where I was hired as the Chief Medical Officer, and she was hired as the Chief Nursing Officer. We started on the same day with the goal of demonstrating a strong unity between medicine and nursing. We both share the philosophy that the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer set the tone and expectation for collaboration between disciplines. Together we have created a culture of mutual respect and teamwork. I could not have done this as well with any other nursing partner. Jill has a true love of the nursing profession and engenders respect among all clinicians. Yet her greatest growth over the last 10 years has been the ability to succeed in the executive suite and at board meetings. She has brought Blythedale’s executive leadership forward in recognizing nursing excellence at the hospital and the need to continually invest in our staff. She can balance operations, strategy, and finance to achieve goals clinically and fiscally.

Jill is a teacher at heart and her staff and nursing leaders continually benefit from her words, actions, and commitment to them. She instills confidence during difficult times and celebrates every success no matter how big or small.  We are fortunate at Blythedale to be a smaller institution, and the staff who have worked in other institutions are often quite astonished that our CNO walks the units every day and knows the patients by name. Don't be fooled by the size of our institution. We face most of the challenges of a large health system, but we have fewer leaders and fewer resources to solve them. Thus, Jill has all the worries and challenges that any CNO faces, but she must tackle them with a much smaller nursing leadership team. However, working for a smaller institution gives Jill many advantages. Jill has access to the pulse of the institution in a way most CNOs never do. This allows her to be nimble and creative at addressing the multitude of challenges that face a modern CNO. In many ways, Blythedale is a Petri dish of innovation that others can clearly learn from.

I can't imagine a better candidate for the DAISY Nurse Leader Award.   Jill embodies the best that nursing has to offer and has a vision for the future that should be shared. She is a relationship builder, a unifier even during times of conflict, and a person that people will follow whether they are a nurse or not.