Magnet Month Award 2022: Exemplary Professional Practice

Heidi is a nurse's nurse. Her 18 years of experience as a bedside nurse at Cook Children's make her an incredibly important member of the 5ST team. Over the past year, we've dealt with a change in units and patient population, while orienting plenty of new nurses to the floor and learning how to work with new equipment. Heidi's knowledge has shined through all of this, easing the transition for us on nights.   

From her time on 4 Main and 5 South Tower, Heidi has a wide breadth of understanding of the patients we see. We've taken renal/dialysis patients when 3P became the designated COVID unit, and behavioral health patients requiring sitters and a different type of care than our med-surg patients. Now, as the surgical/trauma floor, we see plenty of high-acuity kids with a wide variety of health histories. We've taken patients with a H/O diagnosis, neurological deficits, and countless others with conditions we aren't used to seeing but that get admitted to us because they need surgery. Through all this, Heidi was been a beacon of knowledge, helping the bedside staff with unfamiliar procedures.   

As a charge nurse, Heidi has a way of making everybody feel comfortable with their patients for the night. She goes out of her way to help when we're busy getting admissions, helping them get settled so we can see our other patients. She goes out of her way to make sure that our patients are receiving high-quality care. Whenever somebody has to complete a task they don't feel comfortable with, odds are that Heidi has seen it a million times, and she volunteers to go in with the bedside nurse and assist. Heidi also has a great relationship with our providers and will escalate the concerns of a nurse to the physicians. Heidi provides a level of leadership and dedication to our team that is unmatched, and I believe she is deserving of the Exemplary Professional Practice Award.