Tuesday, November 20, 2012
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Donahue named magazine’s Nurse of the Year
UHS’ Megan Donahue has been named a “Nurse of the Year” in the Excellence in Healthcare Awards program of the Bankers Healthcare Group and the Central New York Business Journal. She is a registered nurse and manager of Infection Control at UHS Hospitals. Megan accepted the honor Nov. 7 at the Excellence in Healthcare Awards banquet in Syracuse. She was recognized for her teamwork on OR improvements, such as increasing on-time first-case starts and decreasing turnover times and rates of surgical-site infection, according to her profile in the Business Journal.
In view of the benefits of these changes to both patients and the hospital, she was invited to make a presentation on the topic at this year’s national conference of the Association for Perioperative Nursing. After just over a year on the cardiac surgical team at UHS Hospitals, she became the performance and quality improvement coordinator for surgical services, as well as an expert in Lean Six Sigma. Megan, who has been with UHS four years, has a bachelor’s degree in nursing and is pursuing an executive master of business administration degree at Binghamton University. She received one of three nursing awards presented Nov. 7 by Bankers Healthcare and the magazine; other honors also were presented to physicians, dentists, innovators, patient educators and healthcare advocates.
In accepting the excellence award, Megan told the Business Journal: “Healthcare is an elaborate, evolving industry. There is almost no limit to the variability, and no pause button. As a result, everyone has to be on the top of their game every day.” She credits her UHS colleagues Gail Thalacker of Surgical Services, Kathleen Wold of Quality Management and Kay Boland of Patient Care Services with being mentors who have helped her toward her accomplishments. “I’ve been lucky enough to have been on very supportive teams throughout my fledgling career, and that has largely dictated by successful contributions,” she said.
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