Neelima Tigulla, MBA, BSN, CCRN, ADA 6 East, is a role model who demonstrates extraordinary professional behavior and creates an environment of trust, compassion and mutual respect for nurses and patients. She supports the professional development for the nurses she leads. She motivates staff with a shared vision and enthusiasm to achieve better outcomes for themselves and patients. Neelima exemplifies the values of Teamwork, Collaboration, and shared decision making. She uses the daily huddles to focus on shared goals and promote a safe practice environment through best practices and teamwork.
Neelima promotes and enhances the image of nursing within Kaiser Permanente, the community and the profession, and strives to advance the practice and discipline of nursing in a Patient-Centered Healing Environment through professional practice leadership. She helps to organize community outreach events with the UBT such as a Christmas event at the Eli Home. Neelima is patient with the nurses whether in helping to develop their clinical skills or documentation. Recently, the primary nurse caring for a patient needed help with managing his chest tube. Neelima immediately obtained a chest tube apparatus to teach and demonstrate to all the nurses in the unit. The nurses are now comfortable caring for a patient with a chest tube.
Neelima provides an extraordinary experience and touch to every patient on her daily unit rounds, focused on ensuring extraordinary care. This was the written feedback from one patient: "I would like to formally thank head nurse Neelima Tigulla for welcoming me and making my stay at Kaiser hospital special. After a sleepless night, the day after found me very unsettled and grumpy. In the evening I related this to Neelima, and she made sure that I would rest and be able to sleep undisturbed. She placed a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on my door until 6 am. This allowed the staff to do their job and gave me a chance to get the needed undisturbed sleep. This was a simple solution, yet it produced great results". This example demonstrates how Neelima enhances the Caring and Healing Environment through personalized care. She creates a positive, safe, patient/family-centered environment for the staff to provide the highest quality nursing care.
Neelima is accessible, available, and responsive to the needs of the staff not only while she works, but on also her days off. She calls the unit to provide support. Recently, we had a patient who needed radiation therapy. He also needed assistance with ambulation and ADLs. To avoid extreme exposure, Neelima collaborated with IT, the Dialysis nursing team and frontline nursing staff. All nurses rotated in providing care to limit their exposure to radiation. In addition to Careview monitoring, she arranged for two laptops inside the patient's room, one to view the patient's Dialysis site, and the other to view the Dialysis machine for vital signs. The technology allowed for video monitoring of 3 different views of the patient.
Neelima coordinated with the interdisciplinary care team to ensure safety. She invited the Nuclear Medicine team to provide In-Service on radiation safety to the Staff. Even though it was her regularly scheduled day off, Neelima came in to support the team and ensure they were practicing safely.
Neelima is the UBT Management Co-Lead, working on an initiative to improve communication between patients and caregivers. Through her shared decision-making approach, the 6th floor UBT created and posted a laminated tool in patients' rooms with "Questions for my doctor and questions for my nurse" to help patients write their questions before daily rounds. She promotes the use of the "Ask 3 Teach 3" Medication Education tool to enhance nurse communication with patients as partners in their care.
Neelima's courageous and compassionate leadership is shaped by the KP Nursing values -Professionalism, Integrity, Compassion, Excellence, Teamwork and Patient/Family-Centered.
During her daily handoff, Neelima takes pride to say, "I was able to make rounds and talked to patients," and she shares stories unique to the patients. Neelima is a mentor and inspiration, reflected in the unit's Nurse Sensitive Indicators: CAUTI- Zero since 2015; HAPI -Zero since 2016; CLABSI- Zero since 9/2018.
Thank you, Neelima, for being a compassionate and inspirational leader and mentor.