This past holiday season, a Nashville nurse sang bedside Christmas carols with a patient undergoing chemotherapy. Similarly, a patient in an Atlanta hospital was given a flash-mob style “Backstreet Boys” concert by a team of nurses who knew that the patient had planned to see the actual BSB, but due to her diagnosis was no longer able to attend. These nurses went above and beyond to provide patient care.
Tammy A. always knew it was her calling to contribute to the medical field as a great nurse — specifically focused on both patient safety and quality care.
Tammy began her nursing career back in 1988 as an LPN at a pediatrics office before earning her ADN and becoming a traveling ICU RN in the Salt Lake City area. Tammy then spent many years with Mercy Home Health working in home health care and hospice work, where her dedication to quality care led to many meaningful relationships with patients and their families. One elderly patient was so fond of Tammy, he wouldn’t let her complete his assessments until they had ice cream together.
“These patients, they get to be like your family,” says Tammy. After an 8-year-old girl tragically lost her battle with leukemia, Tammy drove to the girl’s home in the middle of the night to help her mother prepare the girl’s body for the morgue. She painted her nails and did her hair at the mother’s request, one final act of nurturing and love for her young patient.
Over the years, Tammy moved into a director role at Mercy Home Health in addition to seeing patients and enjoyed both roles equally. Tammy says that “seeing patients kept her in touch with the work that was happening in the field,” but she saw the importance of administrative duties.”
After moving to Durango, CO, a friend approached her with a great opportunity. A new hospital in the area needed a Director of Quality. Tammy was the best fit for the job, and she spent many years there in service to the hospital and their patients. However, when she decided to change employers, a BSN was now required to stay at the director level. Tammy enrolled in Aspen University RN to BSN program for the next phase of her professional development.
Before going back to school for her BSN, she thought herself pretty knowledgeable, but since earning her degree in 2018, Tammy admits she’s learned a lot and is applying it at her hospital each day. Evidence-based practice is now at the forefront of her thoughts, and she attributes this new mindset to the amount of research she’s done while at Aspen. She’s currently continuing her studies in Aspen’s MSN program with a specialization in Administration & Management.
Tammy chose her administration and management specialization so she could further her impact at the director level and focus on developing a patient safety program at her hospital, which does not currently have one. On top of her 12-hour workdays — sandwiched between days filled with practicum hours — Tammy has worked tirelessly to develop a business plan for the patient safety program, partnered with hospital administration to hire an internal candidate to oversee it, and written an orientation plan to ensure the program is executed with the attention and care it deserves. In Tammy’s mind, patient safety is her whole job, and decades since her start as a nursing assistant, she is still contributing to excellent nursing practices with her patient-focused drive.
Tammy has been a devoted nurse for over three decades, and although she intends to retire in four short years at age 62, she is still determined to complete her MSN at Aspen. She says she’s “one of those people where if you start something, you finish it. I want to feel assured that I did everything I could to be the best nurse I could be.”
Even into retirement, she plans to use her degree, possibly to teach or more likely to get involved with the National Association for Healthcare Quality and other organizations geared towards patient safety at the national level.
This article was updated in October 2024.