Laura has been the Labor and Delivery Nurse Manager for many years, and her passion for providing the best possible experience for our patients and team members continues to grow.

Laura’s unit is extremely busy, and for the past 5 years, each year has had record-breaking volume. The current state of Labor and Delivery is not designed for the number of deliveries that occur, but due to Laura’s innovative spirit, she and her team somehow make it work.

Laura is a wonderful advocate for her team and patients. She works tirelessly to show her appreciation to the team, from a never ending SOS candy bag, phone calls to team members after difficult shifts, working with team members to accommodate life events and schedule changes, designing pre admission testing to make things easier for the team when a patient presents for a scheduled induction/ c-section, advocating tirelessly for a break room for the nurses which she transformed into a “mini oasis”, starting a journal club for team leaders, leading stellar debriefs/RCAs that always have the emotional safety of the team as a top priority, and truly supporting unit council.

For patients, Laura is a champion for trauma-informed care, autonomy of the patients, and creating the most holistic and nurturing experience possible. Many of our patients are very high-risk, and Laura has fostered an environment of honoring birth plans to the best of our abilities.

Recently, all our community-based classes were in jeopardy of not being able to continue. For over 20 years, Regional Perinatal has managed all the classes, instructors, and schedules. These classes include childbirth education, and they are always completely full. Because Regional Perinatal is a grant program that provides outreach to the region at no cost, it was deemed this year that these classes did not fall into the grant’s scope.

Managing these classes, instructors, and schedules takes at least 25 hours per week, and there was no way for us to secure an FTE to hire someone to do that work. When Laura heard that these classes were at risk, she immediately said, “We cannot let this happen. These classes are too important for our patients. I will make this work”.

She did the impossible, which is one of her talents, and created a plan to save the classes. She and her team have taken this on, and it is due to Laura’s leadership that they were able to save these highly beneficial and necessary classes for our community.

This was such an act of patient advocacy, and it highlights Laura’s compassion, innovation, and leadership skills.