RISING STARS IN NURSING

MARISSA ABRAM, 34

PULSE Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy New York

Since 2014, Abram has been a board member of PULSE, a not-for-profit community-based organization focused on raising awareness about patient-safety issues in healthcare delivery and empowering patients to be active participants in their own care. Abram is also an assistant clinical professor of nursing at the Adelphi School of Nursing in Garden City, N.Y., where, as part of training for nurse practitioners, she has organized a program to emphasize the importance of the patient-provider partnership. She is a psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner and a credentialed alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

AMANDA BAILEY, 30

Mercy Home Health Philadelphia

As a clinical manager at Mercy

Home Health, Bailey serves on the high-risk patient council at Mercy Philadelphia Hospital along with physicians and other caregivers to assess high-risk patients being discharged to Mercy Home Health. She and the team of nurses she leads are in frequent contact with hospital staff post-discharge via telehealth and after home visits to provide updates on a patient’s condition and to discuss any concerns during the recovery process. Bailey also has been active in training nurses joining Mercy, including developing an extended preceptorship program, working with Mercy’s education staff to ensure new nurses receive more intensive hands-on training and one-on-one oversight while providing direct patient care.

BRANDON “KIT” BREDIMUS, 33

Midland (Texas) Memorial Hospital

As director of emergency

services, Bredimus has worked to build a culture of teamwork and ownership among caregivers in Midland’s emergency department. To improve communication among staff members, he created a Facebook page to help foster collaboration. He frequently shares data on outcomes and the patient experience, including stories about service excellence. During his tenure, patient satisfaction scores have soared, as has nursing staff satisfaction. The ER also has among the lowest rates of employee turnover in the hospital.

DANIELLE MARCELLO, 32

Morristown (N.J.) Medical Center/Atlantic Health System

As interim nurse manager

of the inpatient and outpatient pediatric departments at Goryeb Children’s Hospital at Morristown Medical Center and Overlook Medical Center, Marcello has focused on improving patient-care standards within the hospitals. That includes spearheading a change in clinical practice in the delivery of intrathecal medications to pediatric patients, leading other departments to change their thinking and practices to promote improved medication safety. She also established a well-used hematology/oncology nursing journal club that uses conference-calling with other area hospitals as well as nurse associations across the country to share knowledge.

WILLIAM ROSA, 34

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York Currently a palliative medicine fellow at Sloan Kettering, Rosa recently participated in a value/quality improvement project at NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, through the American Association of Critical Care Nurses CSI Academy. It was a 10-month grant-funded initiative to raise the quality and decrease the cost of care for delirium patients. Along with a team of three nurses, Rosa collaborated with administrators and others to improve patient, family and staff education and implement delirium-specific interventions such as “quiet time” and better documentation. Rosa also is the author of the 2016 book Nurses as Leaders: Evolutionary Visions of Leadership.

EMILY TORRES, 33

UC Davis Medical Center Sacramento, Calif.

Now a nurse manager, Torres in 2010 was one of UC Davis’ founding Quality and Safety Champions, given the mission of improving patient safety and outcomes by reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia. She developed a rootcause analysis tool and worked to identify roadblocks to VAP prevention in the operating rooms, working collaboratively across disciplines. Torres was named an assistant manager in 2014 and was soon chosen to open an eight-bed medical-surgical unit, initially intended as a stop-gap facility. It became permanent six months later with Torres overseeing its operation. She also now leads an otolaryngology and internal medicine acute-care unit.