The Board of Trustees for the Wexner Medical Center met Tuesday to recognize staff awards. Credit: Lantern File Photo
The Wexner Medical Center Board’s meeting recognized its staff’s recent awards, including one for individuals who have influenced public awareness about organ, eye and tissue donations, Tuesday.
Dr. Matthew Exline and nurse manager Chelsea McVay received the Champions of Hope award from Lifeline Ohio on Oct. 14., Dr. Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer for the medical center, said.
Lifeline is an organization dedicated to the procurement of organs for people seeking transplants and donations, according to Jessica Petersen, Lifeline of Ohio’s media and public relations manager. Petersen said the award honors individuals and institutions that educate others and work to make organ donation a possibility.
“We do this once a year as a goodwill measure to thank them publicly and to really just keep educating about organ, eye and tissue donation because it is such a complicated process,” Petersen said.
Petersen said McVay was acknowledged for her presentations of donation data in nursing, while Exline was awarded for establishing iReferral, a technology that makes the referral process more efficient while increasing donation and transplantation, according to invitahealth.com. Exline and McVay were among the 19 individuals chosen out of 60 nominees.
Awarded to the James Cancer Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, the Beacon Award for Nursing Excellence focuses on quality in nursing and engagement with patients, according to Corrin Steinhauer, chief nursing officer for the James Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“It looks at the excellence of nursing in intensive care, looking at multiple aspects of patient care, and certainly focuses on clinical quality outcomes,” Steinhauer said.
Steinhauer said the award is meant to only acknowledge ICU-level care. However, intensive medical-surgical nursing was also acknowledged through the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses’ Premier Recognition In the Specialty of Med-surg Award, abbreviated as PRISM.
Deana Sievert, chief nursing officer for the Wexner Medical Center, said both awards provide the same recognition for different disciplines due to the wide variety of specialties in nursing. She said this results in professional organizations for each specialty, including emergency, surgical and ICU medical care. According to the academy’s website, they receive an average 26 applications per year.
