Clinical Nurse Administrative Interview

Administrative Interview: University of Michigan Health Systems U of M is one of the largest non-profit health systems in Michigan that ranked #3 on the Best Hospitals list for National Gynecology for 2017-2018. According to award winning, “University of Michigan Health System treats millions of patients, conducts hundreds of research projects and educates thousands of tomorrow’s medical professionals every year”. (University of Michigan, 2018) Today, I will have the pleasure of speaking with Tiffany Okopien, Clinical Nurse, UMH Pediatric Cardiology/Thoracic Intensive Care Unit. She is known for her talent, dedication and hard work on the unit.

Interview with Tiffany Okopien

Q. The hospital Vision/Mission states “Our vision is to create

I believe that the vision is on par with how we practice in this unit. Practice and policy are forever changing as education and research improves patient quality of life and outcomes for these patients. This truly is a teaching hospital and research is always ongoing involving all disciplines of staff.

Q. Do you feel that you are respected and valued by management?

A. I do feel respected and appreciated by our management team for the most part. Our input is requested frequently, we have numerous committees that our nurses are involved with and many of the decisions to change practice comes from the nursing staff here with management

Technology has enabled us to prolong the lives of so many children, but what we struggle with frequently is just because we can… should we? It is a very delicate balance in deciding how much is too much. While we want to give our kids the best chance at life, and want to give these families the gift of treasured time with their children, often times it feels as though we do too much, and go too far. The children that become chronic, with prolonged hospital stays and have a slim chance of getting better and going home. We see children who are miserable, who are here in the ICU day after day, sometimes without family because they have long since had to go back to work, or have other children and obligations, many of them miserable because they have lines, tubes, ventilators. For these children, our hearts break. These children are the ones who make our jobs so difficult. These children we spend 12 hours with and see the suffering. We sometimes disagree with the medical team on what is the best for them, and all we can do is for that 12 hours is to love them, try to make them as pain free as possible, and give them as much as we can of ourselves. These are the kids that I take home with me, that I worry about, that I think about frequently when I am not here. These are the kids that I pray for, and it’s these kids who I pray to God for peace with the decisions that we are making here. These kids are the ones who haunt me, and the ones who I will never