As a charge nurse leader at the women’s center clinic, Jenny works within a complex environment, one that encompasses six different specialties and serves over 300 patients each day. She handles it all with her signature clinical excellence—with composure, decisiveness and empathy.
Jenny works on many levels at once. She understands the importance of efficient systems to patient care, and she developed a daily template that charge nurses use to assign staff and allocate rooms, ensuring patients can move through the clinic in a timely way and get the care they need. This system has been so successful that other units have adopted it. She is also very focused on the individual needs of each patient. She can diffuse the tension with an upset patient by listening with respect and empathy. As patients have gotten sicker overall in the last several years, Jenny has been able to meet that challenge. When a patient deteriorates and needs emergency care, Jenny jumps right in and starts the rapid response until the rapid response team arrives. At that point, she transitions to making sure the patient is appropriately transferred and the handover happens smoothly.
Jenny advocates for her patients in the community as well: She spearheaded the women’s unit team for Walk of Hope to fundraise for breast cancer, and she also organized the adopt-a-family initiative over the holidays, to raise money for a family whose loved one was fighting cancer. From direct patient care, to supporting her colleagues, to advocating in the wider world, everything Jenny does is about bringing comfort and healing to those who need it.