Julie Powell, RN, CWOCN Nomination for MHA Caregiver of the Year Award - 2014

Julie Powell, RN, CWOCN – Nomination for MHA Caregiver of the Year Award - 2014

Summary

It is a privilege to nominate Julie Powell for the Minnesota Hospital Association's Caregiver of the Year Award. For over 32 years Julie has remained committed to delivering individualized, compassionate, and exceptional care to every patient she meets at our hospital and in our community. She is a clinical expert in wound care and ostomy management who truly understands her patients, their families, and the nurses and physicians she advises. With a warm smile and kind presence, Julie consistently provides invaluable leadership to reduce the incidence of injuries and achieves remarkable, measurable, excellent outcomes in patient care and satisfaction.

Narrative

One of the most frightening and challenging diagnoses a patient may experience is being told they need an ostomy as a result of their illness. They will face surgery that will hopefully resolve their initial problem, but present them with significant alterations of body function and complex processes. After this diagnosis, and before their surgery, Julie Powell will be one of the first clinical experts they meet at Fairview Southdale Hospital. It is often the beginning of a long-term, sometimes lifelong, clinical relationship.

Julie meets a patient and their family on the level of their greatest need. This need may be education on the clinical process - but more often there are emotional needs - support and reassurance that she provides to help them face this new, and often perceived as a devastating diagnosis. Surgeons and excellent patient outcomes are dependent on her clinical expertise prior to surgery to ensure there will be a proper placement of a stoma for the ostomy to function properly after the surgery. She is there shortly after surgery to support the patient as the ostomy begins to work, to show them how it functions and how to care for the new appliances. Julie Powell, RN, CWOCN – Nomination for MHA Caregiver of the Year Award - 2014

For 32 years, Julie has been an active leader, with her colleagues, involved in educating and developing excellent programs for clinicians in wound-care management, ostomies and skin integrity in all of our inpatient care areas. Julie oversaw and maintains the implementation of the

Minnesota Hospital Association Safe Skin and Pressure Ulcer program at Fairview Southdale

Hospital. She maintains an active outpatient ostomy clinic with flexible hours that meet the needs of her patients, to provide ongoing care and support.

Julie is an active member of the local chapter of the United Ostomy Association of

America (UOAA). She participates in a monthly evening support group for patients with ostomies. She coordinates gathering of ostomy supplies from a wide network of resources, from family donations of patients who no longer need products, and older products from hospitals that have been replaced with new vendors. She will stop by people's homes, or other care facilities to pick up products. She brings them to the UOAA support group for people who do not have or cannot afford the resources.

Julie has devoted her entire nursing career to staff education and patients with challenging wound care management problems. She continues to maintain her knowledge and skills through current ongoing education and study to provide the nursing staff and every patient with high quality, evidenced-based practice and care. Julie has demonstrated throughout her life an outstanding ability to touch the lives of the people she works with personally with warmth, compassion and kindness. She is an outstanding leader for our hospital community and in the professional community of Wound Ostomy Continence nursing. It is an honor and a pleasure to recommend her for this award.