What is your current job role, and how long have you been in this position?
I have been an infection preventionist for 22 years, and I have been the senior director of Infection Prevention at UAB Medicine for the past eight years.
Can you briefly describe the goals and tasks of your Epic workgroup?
The Epic Bugsy Workgroup is responsible for developing a standardized approach to infection surveillance and management across the organization. Its primary goal is to ensure that health care-associated infections, pathogens, and isolation needs are accurately captured, easily accessible, and actionable for infection preventionists as well as frontline staff.
The duties of the workgroup include:
- Defining workflows for identifying and tracking infections
- Supporting required reporting
- Building system functionality to enable timely recognition of organisms and appropriate isolation precautions
- Streamlining documentation
- Improving communication across teams
- Developing reports to identify trends and support health care-associated infection prevention efforts
The workgroup ensures that the Bugsy module is practical, efficient, and integrated into clinical workflows, to help strengthen infection prevention and improve patient safety.
What is one accomplishment that you are especially proud of?
I am especially proud of developing the Infection Prevention department into a highly functional, integrated team that partners across the organization. We have moved beyond siloed work to become a proactive, data-driven group that identifies risks, drives best practices, and supports frontline teams. This has strengthened collaboration, improved compliance, and elevated infection prevention as a key driver of patient safety.
Before your current role, what was your most unusual or interesting job?
I have always had very traditional jobs. My most rewarding job, though, was working as a nurse in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at a children’s hospital in St. Louis.
Why are you excited about our Epic Journey?
I’m excited because I’ve used Epic at a previous organization and have seen how powerful it can be in strengthening infection prevention workflows. I’m looking forward to streamlining processes for our Infection Prevention team, to make surveillance more efficient and data more accessible.
Epic also will make it easier for frontline staff to quickly identify pathogens, understand isolation requirements, and take the right actions to protect themselves and patients. In addition, having the ability to pull reliable data on bundle compliance will allow us to clearly identify gaps and target our improvement efforts more effectively.
What’s the next place on your travel bucket list?
An Alaskan cruise. My husband and I will be doing this in August.
What do you do on a typical day off?
I’m usually golfing or sitting outside reading a good book.
What is a fun fact that not many people know about you?
That I went skydiving