Our team exemplifies the term extraordinary. We are committed group, diverse in our backgrounds, personalities, and areas of expertise. We share both a passion for nursing and teaching others. We are consultants and advisors. We work side by side with nurse leaders and hand in hand with staff nurses. We are proud to be called mentors. We touch many, yet are touched by even more. We are besieged with competing priorities but are always up to the challenge, supporting each other and the nurses, patients, and families we serve every step of the way. We strive for excellence in ourselves and work to cultivate the same in others. We take the initiative to accomplish a great deal but respect the fact that teamwork among ourselves and collaboration with others makes it happen.
In today's rapidly changing healthcare environment, effective staff education is paramount to ensuring safe, high-quality patient care. The challenge of finding an adaptable, dynamic strategy designed to reach staff in a way that will engage them, inform them, and promote optimal outcomes, is one which faces all nursing educators. Priorities shift, day to day, sometimes minute to minute, with agendas, timeframes, and deadlines that are not always controllable. From nearly every operational standpoint, there are few organizational initiatives that do not rely on "education" at some point.
A key example of our team's unique talents is in their continuing dedication to education, coaching, and mentorship. Learning events are consistently blended with modalities that include: online modules, simulation, role playing, gaming, discussion, electronic presentations, return demonstrations of skills, electronic and video presentations. The team typically chooses a theme that might encompass a circus, spring training, summer camp, Halloween horrors, or nursing winter Olympics to bring fun to learning. As coaches, our educators are unit-based, providing as well as teaching direct care alongside the nurses they guide. They are role models, nurturing yet simultaneously challenging clinical staff to be the best that they can be.
A current example is the support our team is providing to our new graduate residents in our emergency department, critical care, and telemetry areas. The transition into practice is an especially challenging time for new nurses and can be a vulnerable time for the patients they care for. Our educators have created exemplary RN Residency programs for new graduates. Essential to a successful transition is the bedside coaching and support ensure safe patient care and ease the stress as new graduates adapt to the nursing role and unpredictable healthcare environment in which they work.
Our team truly lives the vision of our organization and our nursing department: to empower nursing staff to practice innovatively, influence exceptional clinical outcomes, learn continuously, and to create an environment where nurses choose to work and patients want to receive care. I am proud to work alongside each and every member of my team, our team. Be they staff educators, clinical nurse specialists or clerical staff, they are a heartfelt and inspiring force within our organization. The reach of nurse educators extends far beyond themselves, to impact countless patients cared for, in turn, by the nurses they have touched.
Department members: Eileen Mahler, MSN, RNC-OB, NE-BC; Dena Alberti, MSN, RN-BC; Helen Caffray, MSN, RN-BC; Madeline Cozzi-Gottlieb, MSN, FNP-C, RNOB, CEF; Katherine DeMelis, MSN, RN, CCRN;Christine Doud, MA; Teresa Eberhart, MSN, RN-BC; Carolyn Engel, MSN, RN, CCRN; Francine Fortin, MS, RN, CNN; Joan Gallagher, BSN, RN-BC; Joanne Hallick, BSN, RN, CNOR; Angelica Hoyos; Nadia Joseph, MSN, RN-BC; Michael Kates, MSN, RN; Joanne Kuplicki, MA, RN, CCRN; Genimfa Lancero, BSN, MAN, RN, CCRN; Susan Ludwikowski, MS, RN, NE-BC; Emily Paul, BSN, RN; Pamela Reilly, MSN, RN, CWOCN; Jacki Rosen, MS, RN, PMHCNS-BC; Patricia Roth, MS, RN, PMHCNS-BC; Marybeth Ryan, PhD, RN; Rachel Sarosy, MS, RN