Kelly has a commitment and ownership that is out of this world. Over the past year, her role has expanded to take on the progressive care and critical care units while also being instrumental in starting up our Co-Op program with Regina High School. Kelly has also found the time to develop the Resource Nurse role and develop the training program for this role. Kelly is 100 percent all in and will do anything to move BGP forward in a positive direction. Evidence of this is Kelly serving on several nursing quality committees and a plethora of other local and system committees. Lastly, Kelly isn’t afraid of innovation and bringing out-of-the-box ideas forward. Kelly recommended we create an “RN Choice“ program that allows nurses the ability to choose what unit is the best fit for them. When we look back on this program years from now, I am confident we will see less turnover and high engagement amongst RN Choice nurses. Kelly also recently attended the ACHA conference and brought back several great ideas to increase diversity and inclusion and in less than a month post-conference, she’s already starting to implement some of these ideas.

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Kelly Adams has a unique role as the Inpatient Nursing Director, leading her team which provides multiple levels of nursing care efficiency and achieves high outcomes. Whether it is bedside shift report, patient falls, or nursing recruitment, Kelly is not afraid of a challenge. When a unit experienced an increase in patient falls, Kelly reached out to the Quality and Safety team for assistance. She coordinated a series of unit-focused Nursing “Grand Rounds” with Quality and the unit frontline teams to review each fall and brainstorm new prevention ideas. She facilitated the implementation of their plan, displaying her commitment to shared governance while supporting new ideas. It was during this work that staff recognized a drift away from performing bedside shift report. Kelly changed her work hours to support the staff to reinvigorate this initiative, involving the patient with their plan of care and addressing the need for the patients to wait for assistance prior to any attempt to ambulate. This simple change led to a decrease in falls with consistent bedside shift report frequency.

Kelly developed a Nursing Extern program with Regina High School students, offering a glimpse into a career in healthcare. She played a key role in recruitment, student interviews and selection, and placement of the students. Kelly monitored their progress and gave feedback to school administrators. Kelly facilitated any issues between unit leaders and the students. Several of the students have opted to work at BGP at the end of their internship period. Additionally, Kelly assesses what is needed for her team to succeed and implements the needed changes. Kelly developed the Resource Nurse role, which supports nursing and patient care activities with a “go-to” specialist for difficult IV starts, corpak placements, and wound care for a group of nurses where educational offerings are not easily available. After the Resource Nurse was implemented, there was a decrease in requests for challenging PIV placements to the EC Staff, and the pressure injury prevalence results identified 0 incidents of Healthcare-Associated Pressure Injuries during the last 2 quarters. Let’s not forget that while Kelly was accomplishing these items, she was supporting Sue Wolka in the creation of a new mixed acuity unit in 3 North. Kelly conveyed the vision of the Progressive/Medical unit with the Observation of patients to be cared for in the same unit. Kelly offered support to the nursing teams on both units to succeed with this new concept. Kelly is a constant encourager to others and a valuable asset to Beaumont Grosse Pointe. I am honored to work with Kelly every day, and I look forward to more of Kelly’s successes.