Makena consistently demonstrates a high level of compassionate, quality care with every client she serves, delivering that within the context of nursing excellence. This year has afforded many opportunities for Makena to shine in regards to her nursing care of complex families.
One family stands out for me as an exemplar of her professionalism, leadership, and compassionate, quality, client-centered care. Makena enrolled a young developmentally delayed couple after the birth of their baby. The infant was soon diagnosed with some significant neurological challenges which necessitated a significant amount of coordination of care between multiple community partners serving this family.
In addition to the complex health and psychosocial needs of the family, there was a layer of environmental challenges in the home, not severe enough to involve CPS but a situation that without intervention could have required their involvement. Makena quickly gained rapport with the couple and was able to assess the complexity of the situation. She worked diligently to understand the family's strengths and limitations, and engaged other key community partners such as the pediatrician, early intervention team, and Safe-Care to round out the complement of services that this family needed.
Makena consistently listened to the family, heard what they needed, and always worked with the family's goals and desire in the forefront of her planning with the family. She spent countless hours advocating for the family's needs and helping other providers understand how best to work with them, striving for a strength based, coordinated, and seamless plan of care for the baby and family. She maintained a high degree of professionalism and partnership with all involved, even though it was challenging at times to work with others who had a different philosophy and approach to working with this family. Furthermore, her strong collaboration with other providers demonstrated her ability to meet the family where they were at and present information in a manner that respected the family's unique learning styles.
Even though this family's needs required a lot of her time, she continued to deliver exceptional care to all of her other clients, as demonstrated by her consistency in maintaining a fully active caseload of 25+ clients each month. She not only does great work with her clients, she also demonstrated an additional level of nursing leadership for the team, serving as a formal mentor for 2 new nurses in the last year. This spring she also attained her status as a Certified Lactation Counselor and is exploring ways to utilize these new skillsets not only with her clients but also organizationally.