Sherry exemplifies extraordinary leadership through her active engagement and advocacy for her unit. She consistently seeks opportunities to improve nursing practice and patient satisfaction. One notable example of her leadership is her collaboration in revising assessment standards for our EMU patient population, aligning them with those of our pediatric EMU patients. This change has reduced the frequency of unnecessary neurological checks, allowing nurses to spend more time providing direct patient care rather than focusing on documentation.

Sherry fosters an environment of mutual respect, professional development, and ethical behavior within her team. She actively encourages her team to participate in Invest program projects that ultimately benefit both the nursing staff and our patients. Her commitment to mutual respect and ethical practice is evident during interdisciplinary rounds, where we discuss complex patient cases and challenging family dynamics. She consistently advocates for the best interests of our patients by recommending Palliative and Hospice consults when appropriate.

Sherry approaches these discussions with professionalism and compassion, which I deeply appreciate. Sherry is nothing short of a compassionate leader. Her dedication to her team on 7 South is evident in the time and support she invests, often coming in early or staying late to ensure her staff feels supported. Especially given the limited leadership presence on the night shift presently. Her team deeply appreciates her commitment.
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Sherry is an incredible leader and is the ultimate role model for our floor. She constantly goes above and beyond for her staff and is a passionate advocate for both the patients and staff on her floor. Sherry has had an open-door policy for staff and is very approachable for new staff as well. She is always there to hear the staff out for any issue we are facing, no matter the size. She drops what she is doing and will advocate for us in the moment, and is always willing to ask the question and remain curious for us.

For example, even small concerns such as stocking our rooms. We brought this up to her, and within 30 minutes, Sherry had reached out to the supply chain and got a solution for us on how to communicate with our floor aide on which rooms to prioritize. She does this for larger and more complicated concerns as well, for example, with our off-unit NIH stroke scales.

These are very time-consuming for charge nurses, and Sherry went the extra mile and raised these concerns to the neurology leadership, who agreed to make certain changes to these due to Sherry asking the question and helping to find a solution that benefits both her staff and the neurology team. There are countless examples of Sherry taking the extra time for staff to help with staff satisfaction and efficiency, in turn helping our patients. I have heard from multiple of our travel nurses how great Sherry is compared to all their other managers and how they could not believe her involvement with both the staff and our patients.

Additionally, she has created the best work culture that I have ever been a part of. She helps facilitate a very open and friendly culture for the unit. Our unit is an extremely helpful unit, and our staff are constantly helping out their coworkers because of this culture. Sherry is also a very genuine person who really tries to get to know/relate to her staff. This has also instilled a great deal of trust with Sherry and our staff. She is always there for us when we need it and actively tries to help us grow in our roles.

For example, she has been a fantastic mentor for me. She has sought out multiple opportunities for me that she felt would help me grow in my role, such as applying for the LINKS program and taking on a unit chair role. She went out of her way to push me to do these and gave me a significant amount of extra time in her busy schedule to answer questions and to get me in touch with others who could answer certain questions she wasn't able to.

By going above and beyond and helping to push me to go out of my comfort zone, my entire outlook on nursing has changed, and I have a much better attitude towards my profession as a whole, while constantly improving as a nurse. Sherry is constantly helping to achieve better patient outcomes as well. She had a brilliant idea last year to really help staff get involved with and create certain floor goals to help with patient outcomes.

With this, she worked directly with the floor's entity council in creating an innovative 'team' approach. We created 3 teams for the unit, including a falls team, HAPI team, and a responsiveness team. These teams all had a goal, and every staff member was part of these teams to help fulfill this goal. We were able to improve patient outcomes while also hitting our team's goals, for example, decreasing our number of HAPIs from the prior year, which in turn helped hit Sherry's ODS goal for HAPIs as well.

This type of staff inclusion was a great idea and really helped create a newfound accountability for some of these ongoing nursing issues, while also allowing new staff members to take on a leadership role in these groups and help them grow as individuals. Sherry is also fantastic from a clinical and critical thinking standpoint. She helped develop an algorithm to get palliative care sooner, ensuring that our patients' wishes are followed. Sherry has been a fantastic leader for our floor, and we are truly lucky to have her.