Recognition Awards

RODOLFO PIKE, RN, BN, MSN (student)

Letter of Nomination

It is with great pride that I nominate Rodolfo (Rody) Pike, RN, BN for the Baxter Award for Excellence in Leadership in CV Nursing. I first met Rody at a research journal club meeting for nurses in the CCU of the Health Science Centre in St. John's, NL that he organized and implemented with great enthusiasm and success. His leadership, research knowledge and love of cardiovascular nursing inspired all the nurses in attendance. Since then, I have had the great pleasure of working on our provincial CCCN executive with Rody who accepted the role of Professional Education Chair for the past two years. Over his 14 year career in nursing, he has worked diligently in cardiovascular nursing in the roles of staff nurse, charge nurse and clinical educator. Currently, he is the Clinical Nurse Educator for the Cardiac Inpatient Unit and the Cardiac Cath Labs at the Health Science Site within the Eastern Health Region of Newfoundland and is completing his Masters of Nursing degree. The following evidence of his qualifications of this award have been complied from interviews with Rody's manager, peer and staff, as well as my own experiences and discussions with him.

Rody's vision for advancing the practice of CV nursing is to promote the provision of consistently high quality evidence-based nursing care. Rody stresses the importance of nurses having the opportunity to be actively involved in current clinical nurse-led research to promote evidence-based knowledge and decision-making. His vision is evident to the Cardiology and cath lab multidisciplinary personnel by how he:

1. scrutinizes the policy and procedure manuals for evidence,
2. contacts clinical educators across Canada to compare practices to work towards safe, standardized interventions,
3. provides the science behind the evidence to nurses as to why policy procedures have changed both formally and informally, and provides current research articles for staff to read,
4. reviews the literature and brings the most current research evidence to Cath Lab Practice Group meetings to enhance the scientific basis for decisions and substantiate rationale for policy change. As an example, Rody initiated a working group with Infection Control Coordinators and Cath Lab Practice Group to address infection control practices within cath lab. As a result, this team is reviewing and will implement evidence-based infection control standards that are lacking regionally and nationally.

Rody demonstrates leadership in administration by representing nurses on the Cath Lab Practice Group as above and the Cardiac/Critical Care Practice Group that oversees policy and procedure development for the Eastern Health Region of Newfoundland. Rody is one of the lead people with the Safer Health Care Now project working on improving quality care for the Acute Myocardial Infarction population. He is also a member of an ad hoc committee for the ARNNL for Post-Basic Critical Care Course approval.

Rody demonstrates leadership in education as Professional Education Chair for CCCN-NL. Rody is chairing the planning committee for a full day educational event in June titled "Cardiology Symposia: A Cardiac Nurse's Update".

Rody advocates the use of and has provided multiple educational in-services on the Canadian Nurse One Portal by the CNA. He encourages nurses to join the Portal as a means to enhance their practice through evidence-based practice. Following his initiation of education sessions, there was an increase of 141 new nurses registered to the Portal in a 2-week period- highest in Canada as stated by the CNA. Within his current role as clinical educator, Rody offers multiple continuing education sessions on a variety of cardiac topics such as, post arrest hypothermia management, acute coronary syndrome and delirium in the cardiac surgery population. Rody assists clinical faculty by gladly providing an overview of cardiac nursing for students prior to each group entering the cardiac clinical areas. Rody also periodically teaches ACLS as a certified instructor and promotes certification.

As further evidence of leadership in evidence-based practice, in addition to initiating the journal club, Rody initiated a research project on reducing bed rest times post left heart cardiac catheterization and will present at the upcoming national CCCN conference. I work with him on this project and marvel at his passion and strong work ethic. He has several more practice issue ideas for research that could keep our team very busy. As a component of his Masters of Nursing practicum project, Rody is currently in the preliminary stages of conducting a needs assessment of the arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) patient population in Newfoundland (NL has the highest number of patients with ARVC35 worldwide). He is addressing the fact that little data exists on the needs of this patient group.

Rody builds and fosters a dynamic team by encouraging a team approach. He involves front line nurses in decisions concerning practice changes and provides literature to team members on which change of practice decisions are then made. He encourages frontline nurse involvement in special projects and recruited a cath lab nurse to join the research team addressing earlier ambulation. Rody was instrumental in building a multidisciplinary team (cardiac/critical care/emergency/EMS) approach for the Safer Health Care Now project. Rody promotes a multidisciplinary approach to nursing staff orientation by encouraging guest speakers form various disciplines to contribute. On the macro level, Rody works closely with other clinical educators to streamline orientation for all nurses entering into the organization and is developing shared electronic folders for educators to share information/presentations.

Rody is consistently a role model and mentor for high quality clinical practice as he advocates for a strong clinical orientation for all transferring staff and new staff coming to the organization. He developed and delivers a 1-week cardiac specific orientation to all new staff. He encourages new staff to set goals and objectives to meet their learning needs based on a competency checklist. Frequently, he meets with new staff to discuss their progress and when needed provides direction for learning. As Clinical Educator, he has increased his presence in the clinical area as staff resource for new and regular floor RN's. On occasion, Rody acts as liaison between staff and manager regarding educational issues and needs of nurses. Another example is his active involvement in the Clinical Educators' preceptorship program for nurse preceptors. This is a 2-day workshop during which he educates and supports nurses who want to become preceptors for new staff coming into the organization. Rody continually encourages nurses to become involved in national and local nursing organizations and is responsible for doubling our CCCN membership in the past year.

Nominators: Cathy Eastwood, Sharon Meehan, Patricia Grainger, Karen Carroll