I would like to commend Ginenne Sullivan RN, BSN. I believe that Ginenne is more than deserving of this Award. Ginenne is a CNIII as well as the RN educator for the neurology clinic. In addition to having 3 children at home she is also in school for her Master's.
At any one time Ginenne has many things on her plate, yet this never impacts the positive attitude she consistently displays. Ginenne is always approachable and willing to help despite what her own responsibilities may be. She somehow manages to balance her duties as educator, as well as working in the clinic often, without receiving designated time for specific duties pertaining to the DEC role.
In addition, Ginenne recently submitted her first abstract, titled, "Telehealth Nursing: Making Seizure Safety Savvy", to the AANN conference and was accepted to do a poster presentation. Ginenne presented at the AANN conference in Boston and was further asked to do a presentation on this subject at the upcoming AACN conference in Kansas, MO.
Ginenne plays a vital role in our clinic. From her compassion and caring for our patients to her always positive attitude to her coworkers, Ginenne embodies all that the DAISY Award represents. I believe Ginenne is a true leader and mentor and feel that the rest of my colleagues would strongly agree.
Ginenne has been a registered nurse with the Children's Hospital Colorado for over 5 years now. Most recently she has been serving in the role of the department education coordinator for the Neurology Department. This role places her in a position of leadership—training, inspiring, and empowering the nursing team to focus on evidence based practice and provide excellent care to our Neurology patients. She is currently pursuing Master's degree with a focus on education (to piggyback on her previous love of teaching prior to nursing). Additionally, Ginenne participated in the weeklong program teaching Evidence Based Practice in the spring of 2016. This course focuses on assimilation, evaluation, and implementation of evidence based practice. She took this education and immediately put it to use.
Nasal midazolam has been a "hot topic" recently as a viable option (as opposed to Diastat) for seizure emergency response. Due to the nature of the medication and the off-label use, some professionals are not comfortable with the administration of the drug or teaching families about the medication. Ginenne has been an integral part of this educational process to both our staff and our patient population. Not only has Ginenne collaborated with our internal Neurology nurses and physicians to provide education, guidelines, and skills check off; she has also reached out to the community. Community health nurses are requesting teaching support and administration guidance from Ginenne and her interdisciplinary team. This team has collaborated with local pharmacies to encourage them to carry the needed aspirator kits, national foundations to begin the collaboration on an education video, and to partner with insurance plans to use midazolam as a rescue medication. Ginenne has pioneered the technology to teach remotely and coordinated over 14 separate outreach clinics via telemedicine teaching to assist the community and help "teach the teacher".
Obviously, all this community outreach requires a well-structured approach within our organization. Ginenne has ensured we approach the process with skilled professionals teaching other staff and families. Ginenne coordinates an annual skills day and markets this to our network of care sites so all nurses that support Neurology patients can have their competency with the process confirmed. She has additionally coordinated the Neurology nursing team's involvement in telemedicine training which is crucial to our outreach families that live in rural areas and cannot drive hours for medication teaching. Ginenne also partnered with community health RNs at CHCO in a quality improvement project to improve the process of requesting and obtaining seizure action plans through the department.
We are so proud to have her as part of our team and look forward to the continued attention to excellent nursing care that her national podium presentations will deliver for CHCO.