Felice works side by side with her team; shepherding, protecting, connecting and fostering the best environment in which her nurses can shine. Felice was integral in getting NFP nurses familiar with other agencies in our community. We have hosted, in our staff meetings, other community members who provide mental health services, adoption services, food banks, care for homeless teens, child protective services, domestic violence shelters, health insurance aid, stop smoking programs, early childhood interventions; virtually, every kind of referral agency in Mesa county, as listed on the back side of the Home Visit Encounter form.
Along with fostering her nurses' connections in the community, Felice encourages her nurses to improve their knowledge base and skills. She regularly sends out information on classes, events, and has opened up training opportunities as she hears about them through other Mesa County agencies.
How we learn most deeply from Felice, is through her embodiment of the NFP practice. I love my supervision time with Felice. I go in with the challenges of my case load, and I leave with a lighter heart. As the recipient, I experience how Motivational Interviewing feels. Felice reflects and summarizes my comments, and I am compelled to add more. I relax and open as she points out my strengths.
Felice has been an excellent model of a working/nursing mom on our team. Several years ago, after a lactation training promoting breastfeeding for working moms, a newly hired nurse stated how sad she was that she had given up breastfeeding because she found it too difficult to pump as a home visiting nurse. We were all taken aback. Here this lack of accommodation of the breastfeeding mom had taken place right under our noses. Felice was the next woman on our team to give birth. She came back from her family leave with quiet determination to honor her self-care and her young baby's nutrition. Felice modeled what we want for our moms and our team members. She went home for a noon feeding, and regularly put a sign on her locked door when she was pumping. She has now breastfed this infant for over a year. Three other nurses have given birth in the last year, and they are successfully nursing and pumping, and occasionally they bring their infants and lighten up our staff meetings. It has truly become a working environment that embraces moms and mothering.
I have come to see Felice's quiet determination as a powerful force. Our team has had challenges in the past year, and I have seen that determination cross Felice's face. It is the determination to find peace, to choose the high road, to choose optimism, to aspire for the best outcome, and to have faith. For the past year, the supervisor of the other team has had health challenges, and been less able to manage her responsibilities. Several months ago, she stopped coming to work. Without missing a beat, Felice stepped in and filled the gaps. Arrangements were made for supervision times for the extra team and management duties were handled. Our team continued to evolve the case conference procedure, integrate our new mental health support advisor, create a mom's social club, and work on developing perinatal depression resources for our community. Despite losing a leader and accommodating family leave for three new nurse mamas, we continued to grow as a team.
NFP home visiting nurses in Mesa County are grateful to Felice for promoting and valuing our practice. We trust and respect Felice, and are grateful to her for keeping our teams centered and grounded in this time of change.