Pt is a 19-year emergency nurse and nurse leader who presents with a chronic, progressive belief that work can be excellent and fun at the same time.
Onset: 2007, at the bedside. Symptoms progressed through charge nurse, educator, and trauma performance-improvement roles. On November 1, 2021 (mid-pandemic) pt took over two emergency departments, an observation unit, and a critical care resource team, about 250 staff in all, with 19 travel nurses on the schedule.
Interventions: recruit, retain, grow people, and make the department somewhere people want to be. That meant recognition, shared governance, pickleball tournaments in full costume, and a willingness to wear MAST trousers for the sake of education.
Response to treatment: zero travel nurses since May 2024. Staff now wait for open seats on committees. A new vertical-care model moves 40–50% of daily ED volume.
Comorbidities: incurable curiosity about AI. Builds practical, human-in-the-loop AI tools for nursing leadership, presented them at the 2025 ANCC National Magnet Conference, and is now in Penn State Smeal’s Master of Applied AI for Business Transformation.
Assessment: Joy-forward nurse leader with innovation tendencies. Plan: collaborate. See orders →
