From her many years serving as a staff nurse in the NICU to her present role as one of Cardinal Glennon’s neonatal perinatal outreach educators, Mary has developed partnerships and intimate relationships with those around her to provide exceptional care and service for 40 years.

Through her 10 years as a neonatal outreach educator, she has provided community nurses in IL and MO with invaluable knowledge on topics including but not limited to: neonatal abstinence syndrome, neonatal resuscitation, hypoglycemia, and stabilization of the newborn in an emergency room setting. Her time, effort, and miles driven across a 250-mile radius to provide education is a pillar for nurses in the care they provide. Her willingness to advance with the times has brought about increased access to education and higher participation numbers for both Southern Illinois and Southeast Missouri healthcare providers.

Mary’s desire to improve outcomes for babies in our region has been the underlying reason she strives to provide quality education. She utilizes evidence-based resources to develop education programs and sets the standard for perinatal nurses and units in the Bi-State region. Along with her partner, Mary identified a major gap and developed a brand-new Special Care Nursery course. She is now collaborating with additional professionals to provide hands-on experiences for the community hospital nursery staff including assisting with intubation, umbilical line placement and management, and tube feeding.

In the past two decades, the incidence of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome has risen sharply. As multidisciplinary team members recognized an increasing number of patients experiencing NAS, long lengths of stays for these patients, and concern for the neurological sequelae that were associated with the treatment of NAS, a NAS taskforce was formed to develop a new approach to care. Mary is considered the leading expert in the bi-state region on Eat, Sleep, Console therapy – a critical intervention in the treatment of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. Mary was an original member of a multidisciplinary task force at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital, St Louis who created policy and practice changes, developed staff and provider education, and collaborated with several departments to implement ESC in which the mother is the main treatment instead of pharmacologic intervention. This culture shift and practice change have had a profound positive impact on the babies and families affected by NAS at St. Mary’s. She has directly and indirectly, through the education of healthcare providers, touched thousands of neonates and their families with her care and compassion.

Mary’s 10-year course in Perinatal outreach, she has traveled approximately 50,000 miles providing extraordinary education and connection in both Illinois and Missouri! Furthermore, Mary has also extended her service internationally! In 2015, she went on 2 one-week volunteer trips to Belize to teach the program “Helping Babies Breathe (HBB).” HBB is an evidence-based educational program to teach neonatal resuscitation techniques in resource-limited areas. Mary’s service beyond Cardinal Glennon territory has a similar theme to our founding sisters who left their homeland to serve areas in need. It is certain that she has left a positive imprint on the heritage of nursing. To know Mary is to feel her authenticity, gentleness, and passion for Cardinal Glennon, SSM Health, and providing better outcomes for moms and babies.