Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Dynamic Nurse IT Leader

PerfectServe’s Nurses of Note awards program honors nurses who deserve recognition for their remarkable resilience and unwavering dedication to their patients. In the second year of the Nurses of Note program, PerfectServe wants to shine a light on the integrity, perseverance, and compassion that nurses so regularly display in the course of caring for patients.

The incredible stories of these honorees paint a pretty clear picture of the people who populate this noble profession, and their experiences offer just a glimpse into the many ways they make the world a better place. Of the 200-plus nominations PerfectServe received, we selected a group of providers to spotlight during the month of May—which, of course, is home to National Nurses Week—and throughout the rest of 2022.

Honoree 3: Robin Gadd-Lane, MSN, RN – Manager of Digital Health and Transformation Systems at Prisma Health (Greenville, SC)

Robin Gadd-Lane wears many hats in her role at Prisma Health in Greenville, SC. As Manager for the Digital Health and Transformation Systems team, Robin leads two groups that transform, organize, and enhance nursing staff workflows, IT connections, systems, and much more. These teams support hundreds of staff across multiple hospitals and ambulatory clinics.

Robin’s Digital Health team handles all things related to telehealth, while the Transformation Systems team focuses on customer relationship management, clinical communications, and clinical on-call scheduling. Both teams work with technology and people to maintain what Robin calls a “digital front door.” As a nurse with 18 years of clinical experience, Robin credits her background in both nursing and informatics for giving her the necessary knowledge and experience, saying it has allowed her and her team to understand different perspectives among a diverse customer base.

Part of Robin’s role involves adjusting workflows to better accommodate the needs of employees and patients alike. Robin works to help nurses leverage PerfectServe’s Telmediq solution for prompt communication between providers and other groups to improve patient care efficiency. The cloud-based communication platform supports the transmission of time-sensitive information related to patient care, and Robin’s job is to assist nurses with its use in cases such as communicating strokes, traumas, rapid response, and other emergencies at multiple facilities. Robin’s work improves clinical collaboration and communication in many ways, such as removing repetitive phone calls and other interruptions to patient care by using text message workflows.

Among her many talents, Robin’s ingenuity stands out. Around two years ago, she identified a communication issue between athletic trainers and the schools they supported during practices and games. Trainers wanted to provide support and coaching to multiple students and teams, but due to scheduling, they could not be in more than one location at once. Robin and her teams combined multiple technological applications to streamline the communication capabilities between these athletic coaches and their teams, giving the trainers the ability to service multiple schools in very short periods of time. Calling the process the “Salesforce-Telmediq Video Integration,” the process works as follows:

• When a student is injured without a trainer present, a QR code can be accessed to find information about the student, their coach, and their parent.
• From this, a Telmediq message is triggered, connecting to an on-duty trainer who can then see all the patient’s info (the patient being the student, in this case).
• A telehealth link is sent, allowing the student and trainer to connect virtually.

Robin’s process allows the trainer to see the patient in real time to potentially prevent an ER visit for something that can be treated or addressed virtually.

Through her hard work, resourcefulness, and leadership, Robin credits her team for their knowledge and perseverance. She shared that the work she does could not happen without her team, and the Salesforce-Telmediq Video Integration process could not have become a reality without their help. And though she is no longer a practicing nurse by trade, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Robin eagerly volunteered to return to the bedside to help her colleagues during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of her varied IT responsibilities, Robin took on nursing shifts during nights and weekends to ease the burden of swelling patient loads felt by exhausted staff. Robin’s natural leadership and innovation continue to make the lives of her coworkers and patients easier and more fulfilling.

Thank You

Robin, we at PerfectServe are honored to highlight the dedication and ingenuity you bring to work with you every day. Thank you for so selflessly serving your community, your coworkers, and the patients who come to Prisma Health to receive care. If you’re not the perfect example of a Nurse of Note—someone who, quite literally, goes above and beyond the call of duty for a cause that serves the greater good—we don’t know who is.

Q&A

In addition to learning about Robin’s role and her creative work process, we posed a few additional questions to get to know her better:

Why did you choose to become a nurse?
My “why” for my life is that I take joy from helping and caring for others. I find value in seeing others be successful. I became a nurse because I found, since I was young, that I always enjoyed treating cuts and other injuries my friends or family encountered. As I got older, I became more interested in the medical field. Once I saw how nurses connected with patients and became the advocates for their care, the profession just called to me. From there, I just kept finding ways to grow.

What is the biggest lesson you learned while serving as a nurse throughout the pandemic?
I was amazed by the sacrifices of so many in my profession. I found joy in using my nursing skills to give back to my community by giving as many vaccines as possible. However, one of the biggest lessons I have learned was that, even with all the sacrifices, too many in the community didn’t want to listen to science. The cost was measured in human lives. Therefore, my takeaway from the pandemic is that we ensure our youth become educated about the scientific method. I don’t believe this information is a lie or misrepresentation of how science works. I believe you must utilize the best evidence-based knowledge you have at that time, and as the knowledge base grows, the findings will either be validated or continue to evolve.

What’s one piece of advice you would give to your younger self about serving in the healthcare field?
I wish I had started my nursing journey earlier! It took several years of trying other fields before I landed on nursing.

What do you do to relax after a stressful day?
Playing with my son and hanging out with my husband. Our family loves to hike, so we spend a lot of time on trails and away from technology during the weekends.

What changes would you like to see in the nursing field in the future?
I would like to see nursing take a bigger role in technology. Healthcare lags behind other industries when it comes to technology, and this creates increased challenges to bring about change to the complex workflows in healthcare. Nursing is typically a central part of those workflows, and they are key to that change. The nurse’s perspective is needed to help bridge that gap between technology and healthcare.

If you had to pick one song that describes you as a nurse, what would it be?
I would say the song “Try Everything” by Shakira describes my life as a nurse.

Make sure to follow our blog as we publish in-depth profiles about more of our deserving Nurses of Note honorees throughout the year.

For more about Nurses of Note 2022, check out the full list of winners.