Nurses 2021 Honorees

She might tie into that need by being funny and silly with a toddler, or conversational and understanding with a teen.

Not only is it calming to the child, it puts the accompanying parent at ease too.

“Many times, it is the parent that you need to care for,” she said. “Even before I had my own child — who has had her own medical problems — I could totally understand the anxiety facing the parent,” she said.

Blecher’s route to Children’s emergency room was far from direct.

“I realized almost immediately that I was NOT an adult nurse. The patients were too needy and whiny,” she joked.

A year on the oncology floor proved too emotional; she didn’t see the neonatal intensive care unit as her last stop either. She considered other options in 2001 before giving the emergency room at Children’s Hospital a try.

“I saw it as temporary until I found what I wanted, and that was 20 years ago,” Blecher said. “Now I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. Every day is different — every hour is different. You can have a teenager in one room and a 2-year-old in another with the challenge of how you deal and talk with them.”

The impetus for a career in health care came with TV shows from the ’80s about the profession.

“I loved the medical shows,” she said. “I’d watch ‘M*A*S*H’ with my dad, ‘Trapper John, M.D.,’ ‘St. Elsewhere’ and other shows. I remember the excitement of the characters identifying and figuring out problems while caring for people.”

An appendectomy when she was a teen gave her a chance to see nurses and doctors in action firsthand. She was hooked. She earned an associate degree in nursing from the College of St. Mary, and while working as a certified nursing assistant, got her bachelor’s degree from Nebraska Wesleyan University.

Committee work in areas like nursing research is particularly enjoyable.

“I’ve found that I love it,” she said. “I’ve since become accepted into a nurse fellowship and am writing an article that will possibly be published.”

Her mom helped with the University of Nebraska at Omaha Afghan Studies Program.

“She was mentoring two Afghan women at a time — 12 altogether — and I really became involved in that,” she said.

The death of a young father four years ago prompted a compassionate response from Shannon toward his widow and their very young children. A close friendship developed, and now Shannon is looking forward to the woman’s remarriage this December.

For the last three years, Shannon has worked through Girls Inc. to befriend a Somali family and their 10-year-old daughter to provide enjoyable experiences (and occasional gifts).

“We have really gotten attached,” she said. “I love spending time with them and their community.”

Because of that connection, Shannon passes along awareness to staff of Muslim holidays, for example, in treating patients of that faith.

Finally, Shannon is heavily involved in Nebraska Medicine’s PINS program supporting staff whenever an incident has impact. Their mutual support was especially necessary with the recent death of Dr. Joe Stothert, husband of Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert and the establishing force behind Nebraska Medicine’s trauma program.

“I always want to do what I can to help provide a better life for people,” Shannon said. “Even for a challenging patient, I will try anything to better their time here.”

She regularly takes new nurses under her wing, remembering the anxiety she experienced on her first day on the job.

“It’s a lot of noise, a lot of alarms going off,” she said. “But I’m there to tell them ‘take a deep breath and be calm, and it will all take care of itself.’ We’re all under pressure here, and I try to be a role model.”

Reassurance is in constant demand for Shannon’s surgical ICU unit supporting the nationally certified Level-1 trauma center at Nebraska Medicine.

Since graduating from Ralston High and completing nursing school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, she has always wanted to be part of the surgical team at Nebraska Medicine.

“I work with one of the best teams out there,” she said. “If you ask anyone, they’ll say, ‘You guys are the best.’”

The prestigious award, he said, was a confidence booster. COVID in 2020 proved to be a confidence shaker.

Wilson’s unit on the sixth floor of the Methodist north tower became the closed COVID unit.

“I feel bad for the nurses starting off last year,” said Wilson. “Just before COVID, we had a low patient census and there was talk of furloughing staff. We had already stopped all elective surgeries. Then the pandemic hit and four-plus shifts of 12 hours became standard on Six North. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) was recommending changes all the time.”

The emotional toll compounded for the nurses.

“The restriction of family members (from spending time with loved ones) was very difficult,” he said. “In one weekend, we had two patients placed on comfort care because of COVID ... and were in their rooms constantly for the families.”

Both patients were lost to the virus that weekend and more were to come.

Wilson’s path to nursing started as a junior in high school with an anatomy and physiology class at Millard South.

“Around that time, my grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer and was treated by Dr. (Yungpo B.) Su and Dr. (Randall) Duckert and both of them were very helpful at Methodist.”

Wilson went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to study biomedical engineering but before long decided his destiny was in nursing. He enrolled at Nebraska Methodist College and started in the progressive care unit at Methodist Hospital in October of 2017. The PCU is the step-down unit from the ICU, for patients still acutely ill but not ready for a lesser level of care.

The demands of the coronavirus brought new skills.

“Cross-training was a constant. We were picking up new things all the time,” he said.

Techniques like proning to ease breathing initially were novel but soon became an important standard practice.

“Today all of us are prepared to learn on the fly.”

Dukes said the mentor and mentee are paired up for a year, not just for the teaching aspects of being a nurse but but also for building camaraderie.

“They attend training sessions together, but also go to breakfast or donate blood together,” she said. “I’ve had to get creative in finding things that can be done together but it’s all to make the new nurses part of the team.”

The program has received notice: Dukes recently made a Zoom presentation to the director of professional development at Nebraska Medicine (parent organization to Bellevue Medical Center) who indicated her plan to meet with the professional development heads of each unit to add mentorships.

Over the past 30 years, Dukes had critical-care nursing jobs in Missouri, Georgia, Arizona and Illinois before landing in Nebraska at Bellevue Medical Center.

With that kind of experience and recognized quality of care (as recipient of a national DAISY Award), Dukes is now considered the “Mom of the ICU” but wouldn’t have minded a mentor herself.

“In my time as a nurse, I’ve never had a mentor of my own or a person who stood out to guide me,” she said. “A lot of businesses have mentorship programs and I felt this was something that could be a resource for our nurses.”

She has created five mentorships for the first year, which isn’t bad for a small department with eight beds and 15 to 20 nurses.

“Our size makes it more of a challenge to find those who want to be mentors and then to match them up for a right fit,” she said.

Originally from Bedford, Iowa, Dukes was an EMT during and after high school and began her nursing education at Missouri Western State University at St. Joseph before starting her career across the U.S. and back.

“Your career kind of chooses you,” she said. “I’ve always liked to help people when they are at their most vulnerable, to help ease their suffering.”

“I roped in the social worker and organized a graduation party in the patient’s backyard with the school vice principal there and everyone in caps and gowns to make the presentation” before she passed days later.

Another wanted to see his college son graduate in South Dakota. A pilot was on standby until the patient’s condition deteriorated, she said, but “the college then did a whole video production where they presented the diploma on stage with everyone in robes and ropes” with the father able to see the graduation before his death.

“I come up with these things. If you’ve got a goal for me, I’m going to go for it,” she said. “It’s to the point where the social worker sees me and asks what I’ve got planned now.”

Originally from “the Illinois side of St. Louis,” Mitchell graduated from nursing school in 2010 and experienced different aspects of nursing before trying a hospice position and falling in love with it.

“I had always worked in a hospital before — in cardiac, mother/baby, urology, oncology. Unfortunately oncology and hospice kind of go together,” she said. “I was adamant about a hospice position and was hired before I even got to Omaha.”

COVID has been a struggle for all nurses, Mitchell said, but for nursing at end-of-life, it’s especially hard.

“That was a big struggle,” she said. “A lot of families try to take their loved one home for the final stretch of life, which is fantastic for the family and frees up hospice space. But now some are only allowed in during the final moments and it is heartbreaking. Like birth, death is a once-in-a-lifetime moment and you want family there.”

Video technology — such as the Zoom video conference app — has eased the separation. It’s particularly appreciated when extreme distance and COVID protocols make it impossible to be together.

“One of our patients had a son in

Poland who got stuck there, so we were able to get them together in a Zoom meeting,” Mitchell said. “In that instance, it was great that we were able to do that.”

“I got online to see what others were doing to help COVID patients and my research led me to what they were doing in Italy and New York and other places, and that’s when I found out about proning,” she said.

Proning involves turning a patient from their back to their stomach to breathe better and has proven to be an effective therapy for COVID patients once they are ventilated.

Circo dug deep in her research, finding the number of people needed to complete the task (four to five) and the disciplines and roles needed (such as an ICU nurse to keep lines and tubes positioned and cleared).

It’s not easy and takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete, but Circo introduced proning to her medical ICU team in late March 2020 and ultimately engaged the physician teams. Proning is now approved and implemented at the medical center.

“Proning has been around for years and years, but as sort of an ‘end of the line’ treatment,” she said, rather than a proactive therapy for COVID and respiratory illnesses. “But now it’s become ‘my baby’ here.”

That Circo tracked this down for her patients is not a surprise. Ever since childhood, she said, she has wanted to take care of people. Originally planning to become a doctor, she soon decided the lifestyle of a nurse more closely matched what she wanted.

When she started at Nebraska Medicine 15 years ago she worked in the burn unit and when that was closed she moved to the intensive care unit.

Despite the diversity of care and pressures of being an ICU nurse, nothing fully readied Circo for the challenges brought by COVID.

“It was absolutely different and had so many different challenges, from how it can be transmitted to how we can protect ourselves and our staff,” she said.

“But it’s given a greater appreciation that our time is precious and that I know this is what I was meant to do.”

She took that desire to care for others and enrolled in the pre-nursing program at Peru State College, finishing her training at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She started her career 26 years ago as an ICU nurse and then took a job managing Nebraska Medicine’s Plattsmouth clinic. Next, she worked as a “float nurse.” Today, she’s a resource coordinator at Nebraska Medicine.

Stander is responsible for staffing 26 units, which is something like playing 3D chess and musical chairs during an earthquake.

“We have to move OR nurses, clinical nurses, procedural nurses and traveling nurses to where they’re needed and make it work, while maintaining the proper ratio of nurses to patients and maintaining their safety,” she said. “Along with that, we need to coordinate the work with therapy, labs, ultrasound and chaplains. You never have enough nurses, and when COVID struck last year it made for quite the ordeal.”

Stander was nominated by a woman whose husband underwent an aortic dissection a few years ago at Nebraska Medicine.

“This is something with about a 5 percent survival rate and it was pretty hard for her,” she said. “I knew they were from Plattsmouth so I stopped in on them while he was here. It meant so much to have someone from their town check on them.”

The families have since become friends and neighbors in Plattsmouth. Stander said she loves to cook and had just dropped off food to the family before this interview.

“Mom always said if you can help someone, do it,” she said.

Stander is still helping her family as well, to the extent of donating a kidney to her father in 2019.

“He said he feels 20 years younger but couldn’t go anywhere last year because of COVID,” she said. “We’ve all been vaccinated now, though, so we’re making plans.”

“What I love about critical care is that you’re involved in every single aspect of the patient’s care,” said Hoarty, who was previously a nurse in Methodist’s cardiac unit for seven years. “It’s tough not being in direct patient care (as) it was my first love, but you really get to know everything going on with the patient.”

He is also the conduit for information affecting the patient.

“I’m always responsible for getting the latest information from our professional groups and especially from the Centers for Disease Control,” Hoarty said. “It’s important for me to provide evidence-based medicine and make sure they have what they need.”

Maintaining control and keeping the team motivated is essential to his job, but Hoarty admits COVID is something that makes a person feel powerless.

“There is tragedy and plenty of it, and it’s not insignificant at all,” he said. “Our people are very resilient, but despite that you have to come up with ways to prevent burnout. You see the reactions on our nurses’ faces as the numbers go up and as the numbers go down.”

The nurses of the ICU recognized what they had with their new leader, especially for devoting time to the ICU with his wife expecting their first child. Within his first year, the nurses nominated him for the DAISY Foundation’s Nurse Leader Award, a national honor. The award — a first for a Methodist employee — was presented at a surprise event last fall.

“I was surprised and humbled,” he said. “This year — these past 15 months — show what we do really has been a team effort. Obviously (COVID) is an event that will be discussed throughout history in terms of how it affected all of us in health care. Our nurses have shown a new dynamic and demonstrated they’re ready to handle whatever walks in.”

“When COVID first appeared in March, they told us ‘we need you to work in the call center as a triage nurse’,” she said. “At first I was reluctant to do it, but then I said COVID is here to stay and I’m all in. There are new friends to be made and new paths to follow. And I was really on the front line, answering questions, helping people figure out if they had it, and I enjoyed it so much.”

She returned to her job at the Outpatient Center in June and then November arrived with a new intensity of the virus.

“They told us oral surgery needed to send a nurse,” Hatcher said, “and I said ‘I’ll do it!’ I wanted to support the COVID effort.”

Although never having worked as an intensive care nurse, Hatcher immediately fell in with the task at hand.

“I was there purely to support — to pass out meds, bathe patients, help them get to the bathroom,” she said. “The nurses there are giving their heart and soul, wearing full PPE in the room. It takes a long time to get out of it. Inevitably, they’re going to need something while they’re in the room with the patient, and I’m there to get it for them.”

“It was a tragic year,” said Hatcher, tears welling in recollection of what she had seen. “But it was my coolest year and the most gratifying year I’ve ever had. I wanted an opportunity to learn and to contribute, and I did that.”

Hatcher said she loves and will stay with her job in oral surgery but still gives time to fight the virus, whether working at a COVID swab station or a vaccination station; she’s also a nurse with the Nebraska National Guard one weekend a month.

“I enjoy new things because I’m open to it,” she said. “You can be a bit nervous, but what have you got to lose? I have willing hands and a positive attitude and that’s what it takes.”

“The patient’s outcome is what matters to me,” she said. “I treat them as family, with respect, and spend a lot of time with them.”

Robinson’s capacity for compassion goes above and beyond in the community as well. She’s volunteered for more than 20 years as nurse for Camp Fun & Faith, a Catholic-based summer camp for girls, but extends to spending time with an elderly woman with a dying husband or a friend who was a victim of a violent crime.

“I always want to do the right thing by people, being empathetic to their situation,” she said. “I have a passion to be at the bedside and be there for other nurses to help build up the skills they need.”

Her nursing interests were piqued as a child caring for sick and injured animals.

“Nursing was always something that I wanted,” she said. “At 17, I was in nurse’s aide training class at Metro Tech, and right after that went to Creighton University nursing school.”

Robinson grew up in the Cathedral neighborhood north of Nebraska Medicine, literally having the teaching hospital in her sights. She was accepted at Nebraska Medicine right out of nursing school in 1977 and has been there ever since.

“Being at a teaching facility is very exciting, because you never know what you’re going to see,” she said, “and I’ve continually learned under the very best. It’s a fun place to work and the people are very quick and enjoyable.”

Robinson chuckles that her years in the hospital have led some to suggest she has extrasensory perception.

“I have the ability to detect changes in a patient’s physical stature which indicates they’re becoming ill,” she said. “I’ll report my concerns and it ends up being what I said would happen. People say I have a sixth sense, but I just know from years of experience and of asking questions.”