Wynne Bird, BSN, RN
SMSC, 6th Flr.


Wynne started a hydrocephalus support group approximately 12 years ago. Through this group, she works tirelessly to support patients with hydrocephalus and their families. Every year she invites members of the group (and their parents/siblings) to an overnight camp in the mountains. She sets up all lodging, supplies all the food, and makes sure there are plenty of fun activities planned. Wynne also holds a Christmas party for the group (again including parents and siblings) every year. She has lunch catered in (by TCH) and has Santa there to give each of the children a gift that she has purchased herself. To afford these activities, Wynne coordinates a hospital-wide fundraiser titled “Breakfast with Santa.” This fundraiser is opened to TCH staff and their own children and includes breakfast and time with Santa Claus. It sells out year after year (over 200 people) and is always a big hit. She puts in countless hours of her own time for this.

Wynne is one of the Clinical Coordinators on the 6th floor. She is known by staff as being very helpful, organized, and always calm in crisis situations. She is a great role model who leads by example. Therapists on the floor say Wynne is team-oriented and supportive of their goals. Wynne is also a great mentor. She is an active member of the mentoring committee, which she chaired for several years. She was part of starting three support groups on our unit (Circle of Wisdom for those who have been nurses over 10 years, Shiraz for those who have been nurses for 1-10 years, and the New Grad Support group for new graduate nurses). Each of these groups gets money for activities and member recognition from a garage sale that Wynne has every summer, with things brought in by fellow staff. Again, she does this fundraising on her own time. She takes time to support and encourage all staff. This past Thanksgiving Wynne also brought a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner to the SMSC staff, after learning no one had planned a potluck that day.

Wynne is a neurology liaison on SMSC. She has done a lot of work to improve patient safety and care on our unit. She was recently the leader in implementing new ideas for how we respond to patients being monitored for seizures, who are actively seizing. Some of the improvements include adding seizure timers in patient rooms, and adding an EMU (Epilepsy Monitoring Unit) Emergency button in the room. This button alerts appropriate staff on the floor that there is a seizure emergency in the room, without having to call a COR (although a COR may still be called if needed). She also helped make a new EMU Cor Sheet containing medications frequently used on seizure patients, and posted phone numbers of EMU physicians and drug dilutions on the side of each seizure patient’s medication bin. This allows any nurse working on the floor to have quick access to phone numbers and medication information so the bedside nurse can safely stay with the patient.

Wynne also shows caring and compassion outside of pediatric nursing. She rescues Doberman dogs that have been abused, neglected or abandoned and takes them into her own home, nursing them back to health. She then adopts the dogs out, or if no one will take them, she keeps them herself! Wynne is known to stay up nursing them when they are sick and feeds them home-blended food if they are too sick to tolerate dog food.

Wynne is a very caring and sweet person, who never has an unkind word to say about anyone. She has dedicated her life to improving the care of kids AND their families, and she does this without many people knowing about it or taking credit for much of what she does.

Wynne is an excellent candidate for the Daisy Award!