I work with an extraordinary team of Occupational Health Clinic (OHC) staff whose mission is to protect VUMC and VU faculty and staff while they are at work. We see patients for work-related injuries, regulatory-related physical exams, various occupational related immunizations, and many other services at main clinic. We also have a separate walk-in Express Care Clinic that services employees with minor illnesses. Additionally, our clinic manages a variety of programs to monitor exposure to workplace hazards. OHC also provides onsite services to VUMC employees who work at other satellite locations and the regional hospitals. As the manager and a nurse practitioner at OHC, I am very proud of our team for what they have done, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, to keep employees safe and healthy.
We faced the biggest challenge that we ever had before during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team not only had to work with VUMC key stakeholders to implement a massive COVID vaccination program using our well-known emergency preparedness model of Flulapalooza with very short notice, but also had to quickly came up with a plan on how to manage employees safely returning to work after they tested positive with COVID-19. With our extraordinary leader, Dr. Lori Rolando, a phenomenal team of OHC staff, and great support from Health & Wellness, we were able to reach a 98% compliance rate of VUMC employees with primary COVID vaccination, and we’ve also safely returned to work over 14,000 COVID-19 positive employees to date per CDC’s guidelines. We also had to quickly turned our Express Care Clinic into a COVID test location to facilitate COVID testing needs for employees when the pandemic was at its peak. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Monkeypox also appeared in the world, and we had to work quickly with the Tennessee Department of Health and CDC to offer Monkeypox vaccines to high-risk employees at VUMC.
This year, we successfully implemented the 10th Flulapalooza event after it was withheld for two years due to the pandemic. This event was first implemented when I started at OHC. I am most proud about that I was part of the team when it set a Guinness World Record for the most flu vaccines given in 8 hours at a single location. Since then, I have become the incident commander for this event in the past 8 years and lead the planning team for this event annually. I was one of the contributing authors when we published an article about using Flulapalooza as an emergency preparedness model.
Therefore, one of the opportunities that I can see that I must do is to keep up with the most updated the CDC’s recommendation regarding the evidence-based practice with vaccination and infectious disease prevention. Doing so allows me to be better prepared to give consultation to patients and to provide guidance for our clinic staff.
I love to travel with family & friends during my spare time. My husband and I love to ski & hike. I also like gardening, watercolor painting, and Yoga.
