State Nursing Excellence Awards 2008
Recognising and valuing outstanding achievements by
Victorian nurses and midwives.
The State Nursing Excellence Awards 2008 presentation ceremony was held on Tuesday 2 December at the Sir Redmond Barry Room in Melbourne. The successful event was attended by approximately 200 guests. Such guests included, Directors of Nursing, representatives of Nurses Board of Victoria, senior executives from the Department of Human Services including the Secretary and Undersecretary, nurse academics and most importantly most nominees, nurses and midwives and their guests.
As per last year, The Minister for Health, The Honourable Daniel Andrews presented five healthcare awards. The Honourable Lisa Neville, Minister for Mental Health and Minister Senior Victorians, presented the awards in mental health and aged care.
The Jen Rusden Memorial Award, sponsored by the Department of Human Services, was presented by the Secretary, Fran Thorn.
The State Nursing Excellence Awards 2008 award recipients are:
Excellence in Nursing Practice
• Monica Kerlin, Melbourne Health
• Loretta Williams, Western Health
Midwifery
• Patrice Hickey, Western Health
Division 2 Nursing
• Leanne Satherley, Southern Health
Improving Health Outcomes for Indigenous Clients
• Doseena Fergie, Eastern Health
Mental Health Nursing
• Gary Croton, Northeast Health Wangaratta
Aged Care
• Angela Lindsey, Melbourne Health
Jen Rusden Memorial Award
• Cheryl Steele, Western Health
Excellence in Nursing Practice
This award recognise nurse’s working in any practice domain or setting who have made a unique and outstanding contribution to improve the working lives of nurses/midwives, supporting transition and reform or developing professional nursing and midwifery practice.
Monica fulfils the role of Coordinator of the Chronic Heart Failure Service within, one of Victoria’s busiest Cardiology Department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
In 2001, Monica identified those with chronic heart failure were not being effectively managed and assisted in meaningful way to cope with the effects of their disease. Through her determination she was instrumental in lobbing for support for her ideas and proposed a compelling argument and business case based on the available evidence and identified need.
The programme commenced in early 2002 and now provides a comprehensive suite of services for inpatient consultation, community referral, telephone follow up, outpatient heart failure clinic, outpatient exercise and education programme and the discussion groups for culturally and linguistically diverse clients with heart failure.
The outcomes from this initiative are impressive including an 84% reduction in ward admissions and a 98% reduction in ED presentations, with improved quality of life for those clients. Importantly, the results have been sustained over the four years the program has been running.
Monica’s caring and empathetic nature is evident at first contact, empowering patients and families to cope with this chronic disease. She receives many compliments, such as ‘I always feel better after I have seen and spoken with you. I feel stronger and better able to cope’.
Loretta Williams works as the Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Consultant for Western Health and has been the lead in establishing an outreach palliative care program that aims to provide services so that preventable hospital admissions at end of life can be avoided.
The service was launched in April 2007, and has been effective at reducing pain scores for outreach patients, granting the wishes of terminally ill patients to be cared for in their homes and reducing the number of admissions to hospital for symptom control or support for their carers. This program is ongoing and continues to have positive outcomes for patients and their families.
The Palliative Care Outreach Model bridges the service delivery gaps for clients with a terminal illness and ensures cooperative management of palliative care patients in the home setting, supported with community services and with back up from the consultancy service.
Midwifery
This award recognises a midwife who demonstrates excellence in midwifery practice, and outstanding commitment and skill in promoting change and choices for Victorian women and their families.
Patrice has been involved in setting up, promoting and evaluating the caseload model of midwifery care for Western Health and has demonstrated a high level of commitment to the model, persisting through the many barriers of implementation of a new model.
The caseload model is woman and family centred and aims to provide continuity of care, of one midwife from early pregnancy, through to birth and to the return to the home environment, and is a model that many women in Victoria want to access.
The caseload model at Western Health that Patrice helped to establish has reduced the rate of Caesarean section for these women, increased the breastfeeding rate and has high levels of acceptance and satisfaction from the women who access it.
In addition to providing women with services that meet their needs, the caseload model is also attractive to midwives and assists in retaining them. At Western Health, the model has grown from 6 midwives in May 2008 to now 12 and is expected to have 24 midwives participating by April 2009 proving care to over 1000 women in the Western District.
Patrice is a recognised leader in midwifery both in the clinical area and professionally. She is well known for her work with the Australian College of Midwives and the community to facilitate the provision of the type of care that women and midwives want.
Division 2 Nursing
The Division 2 Nursing award recognises a Division 2 nurse who demonstrates exceptional contemporary nursing practice and is recognised by their peers as a clinical leader in the workplace.
Leanne Satherley is a Division 2 nurse, currently working at Southern Health, and has considerable experience in mental health.
Leanne has been recognised for her exemplary work in coordinating the Mental Health Aggression Management Project at Southern Health. To date, Leanne has trained and mentored more than 40 clinicians to become trainers in the project; including Consultant Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Registered Psychiatric Nurses.
Leanne has also successfully developed community and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) packages to support specialist areas of practice.
With an interest in natural therapies and practices, Leanne’s personal style is admired by others and is a credit and inspiration to the mental health workforce at Southern Health. She has made a transition from believing she was ‘just a Division 2 nurse on the ward under the direction of Division 1 nurses’ to now having the confidence to set a high standard of practice for the rest of the team to aspire to.
Improving Health Outcomes for Indigenous Clients
This award recognises a nurse or midwife who demonstrates outstanding commitment and excellence in practice to improve health outcomes for Indigenous clients and communities.
Doseena Fergie
In her role as Clinical Coordinator Indigenous Health team at Eastern Health, Dosenna has been a compelling, visionary leader and has had a transformational role in how the service has evolved over the past 9 years.
Dosenna, a proud Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander woman, a Registered Nurse and Midwife and has led and nurtured the development of a multidisciplinary aboriginal health team within a mainstream health service at Eastern Health to meet the health needs of the indigenous community in the Eastern Metropolitan Region of Melbourne.
Her work, passion and commitment spans working with schools, maternity care providers, youth outreach and a range of other providers to make these services more accessible to the indigenous community – always guided by the principles of partnership and aboriginal control and enterprise, with governance vested with the indigenous community.
Doseena is highly respected and is active in promoting indigenous health through her leadership and involvement in a range of advisory roles within the sector as well as at local, state and national level. She is a role model for both the Indigenous and non Indigenous communities as well as for nursing. She is a visionary, with her unique achievements being highly admired by her colleagues.
Mental Health Nursing
This award focuses specifically on initiatives for improving outcomes through nursing actions for clients with mental health and/or drug problems.
Gary is a sole project worker for Eastern Hume Dual Diagnosis Service within Northeast Health Wangaratta. Gary’s core work is to improve outcomes with clients with dual diagnosis presenting to Eastern Hume drug and mental health services.
In Victoria, as in other parts of the world, mental health and alcohol and other drug services are working with increasing numbers of people who are experiencing both mental health and drug and alcohol problems and disorders. The co-occurrence of these problems and disorders (dual diagnosis) is challenging and often not well recognised or understood.
Gary’s extraordinary commitment to improving the recognition of dual diagnosis and achieving the most effective possible responses to all those in the service has been outstanding, wide reaching and innovative.
Gary participates and contributes to planning, policy, advisory and managerial groups, and also designs and delivers education and training sessions to a range of audiences nationally and internationally. He has utilised a wide range of mediums to identify and promote best practice care and management of those clients with dual diagnosis including screening tools for other clinicians, a widely used website, podcasts and publications.
Working tirelessly, and often in his own time, many of the major improvements in the recognition, assessment and care of clients in this challenging field have been highly influenced by Gary’s efforts. In summary, it is evident Gary is a respected leader in the growing field of dual diagnosis and a tireless advocate for improving and understanding and care of people with substance use and mental health problems.
Aged Care
This award recognises a nurse who demonstrates excellence in aged care including responding to the particular challenges of aged care in residential care services.
Angela Lindsey, is a highly regarded Clinical Case Manager with the North West Dialysis Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In this role Angela is responsible for the overall clinical care of patients undergoing renal replacement therapy and supervising the care of patients undergoing dialysis treatment.
In this role Angela identified that the aged clients receiving dialysis often had specific and complex needs. In particular, the needs of aged clients and the quality of care and communication when clients were moving between aged care facilities and the acute sector and back again was identified by Angela as an area for improvement.
Angela’s work includes working collaboratively with aged care facilities and others, to jointly identify the specific gaps in providing care for aged clients who are receiving renal dialysis, researching the evidence and then developing an Aged Care Package providing relevant and targeted information to enable carers (including aged care providers) and patients to better understand dialysis. The Package includes an information booklet, communication book designed to travel with the client, a CD outlining treatment options and explanation of more common treatment complications.
This initiative has resulted in improved clinical outcomes for older people undergoing dialysis including in the areas of better medication management, dietary intake, fluid management – all key areas for those with renal failure and for those providing supportive care including aged care facilities.
This program is now ongoing, continuously receiving positive reviews and there are clear opportunities to expand the package to rural renal satellite centres in the future.
Jen Rusden Memorial Award
This award is presented by the Secretary, Fran Thorn. The recipient receives a monetary scholarship of $2000 to further develop their profession.
Sponsored by the Department of Human Services, the Jen Rusden Memorial Award commemorates the achievements of the late Jen Rusden whose work, while living with breast cancer inspired all around her. Jen Rusden was a community health nurse who demonstrated excellence in nursing and believed in empowering the people she worked with to make decisions about their care and treatment. Jen educated, supported, and counselled women with breast cancer. She established and coordinated the Daffodils Breast Cancer support group for women living with this disease.
Nominated by the women she worked with, Jen was the recipient of a Nurse Care Award in 1997, before passing away in 1998 after losing her battle with breast cancer.
Jen epitomised the skills necessary for sound, patient centred practice. She clearly saw that working with clients in a partnership yielded better outcomes for all concerned. This award was established in her honour.
The recipient of this award is to a nurse who exhibits the traits that Jen Rusden exhibited in her professional practice.
Cheryl Steele currently fulfils the role of Manager of Diabetes Education Services in Western Health, a role she has held since 2004. She manages staff on each of the three campuses and is responsible for inpatients and outpatients across the Western Health.
With 20 years experience working in the specialty of diabetes, Cheryl is absolutely dedicated to her patients’ care and for development of services which extends beyond the normal hours and requirements of her role.
Diabetes, the sixth leading cause of death in Australia, with 275 Australians developing the disease every day, is also a growing concern in the Western Health community, where Cheryl set up the first adult Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion Pump Service, in Australia. It is a credit to Cheryl that this pump therapy service provides a centre of excellence and has the largest patient base, nationally.
In 2005, the Insulin Pump Service commenced and showed a rise in patient numbers. This service assists patients undergoing the trauma of daily injections and managing diabetes, reducing the need for hospital admissions.
Cheryl has presented at numerous conferences, has published a number of articles in nursing journals and has written a book. One article – on running group mentoring programs for Diabetes Nurse Educators - was recognised by the Australian Diabetes Educators Association and now appears on their website as an example of a successful mentoring model.
With her skills and knowledge, Cheryl actively demonstrates the values of Western Health and empowers other staff to do the same. It is clear that Cheryl recognised the community’s need to foster a culture of shared understanding of diabetes and to be part of the solution.
Contact
All enquires can be directed to the Nurse Policy Branch or on 9096 8971