Regional Director, Clinical Professional Development
UPMC
I am a registered nurse of 9 years with UPMC. Upon completion of my ADN from Harrisburg Area Community College, I started my career as an operating room nurse, circulating and scrubbing a variety of specialties. During my employment, I continued my education and obtained my BSN from Millersville University and my MHA from Walden University by February of 2019. I developed a passion for precepting and education during my time in the OR.
The nurse educator role was such an important role to me when I started my career to learn the foundations of the OR, and I strived to provide new nurses with that same support. I have worked in nursing education for 6 years in various roles with a focus on improving our onboarding and orientation strategies for new nurses in an operating room setting for a seven-hospital region. This included the importance of engaging new hires in learning to scrub. I then was able to move into a nurse leader role as a manager of perioperative education. This allowed me to focus on the standardization of our onboarding processes for our region and develop new nurse educators into their roles. Most recently, I have taken on the role of regional director, where my responsibilities now extend outside of just perioperative nursing education, but my passion and expertise remains with surgery. I was able to collaborate with five other regions within UPMC for a common goal of standardization that promotes new nurse retention and confidence in their roles. This is where my work with updating our onboarding approach in the OR started and allowed us to focus on individual needs and strengths of new hires to set them up for a successful and supportive learning environment.