By Geralyn Magan
The recipient of the 2019 Joan Anne McHugh Award for Leadership in LTSS Nursing works hard to create a positive workplace for her team.
Jamey Walker, RN received the 2019 Joan Anne McHugh Award for Leadership in LTSS Nursing from Joan’s sister, Margaret Kyriaco, and LeadingAge Board Chair Carol Silver Elliott.
Jamey Walker, RN, was working as a case manager at Parkview Noble Hospital in Kendallville, IN, when she received a surprising call from the nurse liaison at The Village at Kendallville, a LeadingAge member and one of 5 Indiana communities operated by Lutheran Life Villages (LLV).
The nurse liaison had one question: Would Walker be interested in applying for the then-vacant position of Director of Nursing (DON)?
Walker and the nurse had worked together as partners for some time. In her hospital position, Walker referred Parkview Noble patients to LLV for post-acute rehab, and arranged hospital stays for LLV residents who needed acute-care services.
In addition, Walker was no stranger to long-term services and supports (LTSS), having worked as a nurse manager at Greencroft Goshen, a LeadingAge member in Goshen, IN, before returning to Kendallville, her hometown, a few years earlier.
“I always loved the people I talked to (at LLV),” says Walker. “I actually wasn’t looking to change jobs, but I knew the minute I walked in this building that I was going to take this job. It just felt like home, it really did feel like home.”
As Kendallville’s DON, Walker is responsible for supervising the 60 nurses and certified nursing assistants who provide residents with long-term and post-acute care. Walker also spends a good deal of time and energy trying to get prospective team members to fall in love with The Village at Kendallville, just like she did 4 years ago.
By all accounts, she’s pretty good at it.
5 WAYS TO CREATE A POSITIVE WORKPLACE
Walker’s success in creating a positive work environment at Kendallville was one of the many accomplishments cited by LLV colleagues who nominated her for this year’s Joan Anne McHugh Award for Leadership in LTSS Nursing. She received the award at the 2019 LeadingAge Annual Meeting & EXPO in late October.
“We tell (prospective team members) that we will always be open and flexible and that we will be more of a family than we will be a workplace to them,” says Walker. “We’re here to bring them into our family so they can help residents enjoy their time here.”
This isn’t just a come-on to get recruits on board. Walker feels that sense of family at Kendallville, and she wants the same for other team members.
Walker tries to make that happen by following 5 leadership principles:
1. Practice Person-Centered Leadership: “I really try to encourage everyone to look at each other as a whole person and not just someone who is here to do a job,” says Walker.
This means that Walker and her assistant director of nursing take extra time to help younger team members, especially those with little family support, to file tax returns, open checking accounts, or complete financial aid applications for nursing school. Offering flexible schedules that accommodate team members’ personal circumstances has helped with retention. So has LLV’s willingness to offer tuition reimbursement and scholarships to team members who want to advance in their careers.
“We are here to help them succeed in life, not just here,” says Walker. “If we can do that for them, then hopefully they’ll be there for us.”
2. Encourage Flexibility: Coping with constant change—in regulations, resident acuity, and staffing levels—has been Walker’s biggest challenge as DON, but she believes the ability to be flexible has been her greatest asset.
“You have to be flexible,” she says. “If you come into this role with a rigid mindset, you’re going to fail because your day is never what you planned. And you can’t get rattled by little things, you just can’t. When I find the team getting that way, I always say, ‘Just take a breath. Don’t get derailed because one thing goes wrong. You have to roll with the punches, or you’re going to drive yourself crazy.’”
3. Provide The Right Tools: Walker’s pep talks are complemented by robust training designed to give team members the tools they need to do their jobs well. That approach has been particularly successful in Kendallville’s newly redesigned memory care setting, which just adopted the Teepa Snow dementia care training program.
“Our main goal has been to make sure (team members) have the tools they need to interact with residents, eliminate unmet needs, and make sure residents are receiving the programming they need to keep them engaged,” says Walker. “It’s all about keeping the training going.”
4 Encourage New Skills: Walker got the opportunity to demonstrate the value of training after agreeing recently to help launch LLV’s new electronic medical record (EMR) system. She didn’t ask for the job, and initially doubted that she would succeed. But good training and ongoing support from the EMR vendor helped her discover something new about herself.
“I found out that I have a knack for technology,” says Walker, who is now LLV’s clinical informatics nurse. “I never thought it would be something I would want to do.”
Walker hopes her success will inspire other team members to make the same discovery about their own interests and capabilities.
5. Depend On Others: Finally, Walker attributes her success to the fact that she works with a team whose members look out for each other and have each other’s backs.
“A lot of the things we implement here are their ideas, not mine,” says Walker about her fellow team members. “They are the ones dealing with the daily things that go on, and they are the ones who have the best ideas about how to solve problems. I don’t have all the answers. I couldn’t do this job without any of the people who work here.”