Nurse Pat Wilbur Leads by Example

Posted: Mar. 21, 2008
return to IFAS Age Newletter March 2008

Amazing things happened to Pat Wilbur after she received the Joan Anne McHugh Award for Leadership in Long-Term Care Nursing at AAHSA's Annual Conference in October. For one thing, Wilbur immediately became a celebrity at The Cedars in Portland, Me., where she's regularly pointed out as "our award winner" to families touring the facility. Wilbur has also been asked to take on new responsibilities at work. In addition to serving as the charge nurse on a 24-unit long-term care unit, she now chairs her facility's Person Directed Care Committee and has become more involved in hiring and evaluating the certified nursing assistants (CNAs) who work for her.

"That has been really good," says Wilbur about her new hiring duties. "It's like picking your own chosen few, and right now I have a very good team."

Word of Wilbur's McHugh Award also spread outside The Cedars in the weeks after she was recognized as a nurse leader. She made headlines throughout Maine, her church honored her with a gala celebration and another local congregation asked her to help them hire an elder care coordinator.

"There's been a lot of publicity and at first, I didn't know what to do with it," says Wilbur. "But then I said, 'I am the same nurse that I was before I got the award and that's not going to change.'"

Hospital to Nursing Home

The kind of nurse that Wilbur is today has been greatly influenced by her own experiences as a sickly child who was hospitalized often and learned quickly "which nurses were good nurses and which nurses were just there for the paycheck." After high school, Wilbur set out to become one of those "good nurses," working first as an aide, then as an LPN and finally as an RN at a major hospital in Portland.

Always drawn to working with the elderly, Wilbur says she decided to move from acute to long-term care after becoming increasingly concerned that older hospital patients were being "shortchanged on their care" due to staffing shortages. All along, though, she knew she would apply to work at one facility: The Cedars.

"I went to Cedars because I had seen their residents come through the hospital and they were clean and their skin was good and Cedars kept calling to ask they were they doing," she says. "So I knew that they were loved."

Demonstrating Love and Setting an Example

A sincere love for older people is at the heart of Wilbur's work at The Cedars. Whether she's greeting a new family at the door of her unit, helping a resident use leftover bananas to make bread or sitting vigil with dying elders, Wilbur spends her workday living out what she says is her personal calling. That mission is to make her residents' last home "the best that it can be." The CNAs who work for Wilbur have taken notice.

"You have to do it by example," says Wilbur about teaching CNAs how to care for older residents. "If someone sees a nurse who they know is hugely busy taking the time to sit on a resident's bed and hold her hand, it means something. It leaves a picture in their heads."

Whatever Wilbur is doing seems to be paying off. Her unit has the highest retention rate at The Cedars and the lowest incidence of pressure ulcers.

Giving and Receiving Support

Wilbur says the secret to her success comes down to one thing: she's a listener. She listens to her residents whenever possible. And she begins each workday at 7 a.m. with a "morning huddle" where she shares information about residents and then lets CNAs tell her what's on their minds.

"They feel comfortable coming to me and saying, 'Pat, I know you put a lot of thought into this, but it's not working.' They know I'll listen," she says. "I have the last say, but if something needs to be changed, I'm the first one to do it and they know that."

Wilbur says she feels similar support from her own supervisors. For example, her facility's support for resident-directed care is allowing Wilbur's Person Directed Care Committee to do "some fun things," she says. Recently the group initiated a popular program that rewards staff members who are seen providing resident-directed care with on-the-spot praise and a ticket for a free dress-down day.

"I've been able to make some strides here at Cedars because they (the administration) are open minded and willing to bear with me when I have one of my crazy ideas," she says with a chuckle.