Walking in her shoes: One Nurse's approach to teaching and leading in the field
Suzy Hammer-White, MSN, MHA, RN, CNML, uses her 28 years of experience in nursing to help teach, coach, and guide fellow UI Health Care nurses in the ambulatory care setting.
A pair of white Birkenstock clogs sits on a shelf in Suzy Hammer-White’s office. They’re falling apart, soles worn down to the cork, and wrinkled in a way that suggests they’ve seen miles of hospital hallways.
The shoes aren’t quirky décor, however. They’re a powerful reminder of Hammer-White’s days providing direct patient care. She wore the shoes doing nursing rounds, racing to the intensive care unit, standing next to someone receiving life-changing news, and holding the hand of someone taking their last breath.
For Hammer-White, this pair of shoes represents all her experiences that she now shares with nurses in her role as a nursing practice leader in the Ambulatory Care Services Nursing Unit at UI Health Care’s university campus.
Over her 28-year career, Hammer-White has grown from staff nurse to nurse manager and now into her current leadership role. While she sometimes misses working directly with patients, she finds meaning in sharing the lessons she learned—many of which she experienced while wearing those Birkenstocks—with her team.
Today, her hands-on experience in patient care shapes everything she does. Patients remain at the center of her leadership philosophy, and she uses that mindset to guide new and transferring team members as they step into the ambulatory care setting.
Hands-on learning leadership
Hammer-White plays a key role in student education within ambulatory nursing at UI Health Care. She supports medical assistant externships and shadow experiences at multiple ambulatory clinics across our health system. She also works with the UI College of Nursing to facilitate student nurse experiences that provide future nurses with exposure to direct patient care. Additionally, Hammer-White has been instrumental in implementing a successful needlestick intervention project in ambulatory areas, which earned national recognition and continues to receive grant support through her ongoing efforts.
A life-long learner, Hammer-White says she’s more recently appreciated gaining perspective from other health care educators across UI Health Care’s expanding health system, including nurse leaders based in UI Health Care community clinics, those at Iowa River Landing, and more recently, at Mission Cancer + Blood.
“We learn from each other,” she says. “It’s a two-way street.”
Overall, Hammer-White’s collaborative approach to education and engaging teaching style creates positive, hands-on learning opportunities for future health care professionals. For all her extraordinary efforts and impacts to nursing at UI Health Care, Hammer-White was recently honored with the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurse Educators.
“Suzy's dedication to continuous learning is encapsulated in her favorite quote by Florence Nightingale: ‘Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses…we must be learning all of our lives,’” says Melissa Gross, director of nursing services, who nominated Hammer-White for the annual DAISY Award. “She is a leader who demonstrates the ability to lead and innovate, serving as a strong role model for patients, families, employees, and colleagues. Suzy is an extraordinary nurse educator who inspires everyone she interacts with to be better humans.”