Program - November 29, 2018

Melissa is our president-elect.  She shared the she grew up locally.  She is married and has a daughter who is a senior at Lebanon High and has received a variety of scholarship opportunities from various colleges.  She is very proud of her accomplishments academically.  Her son is 15 and doing well too.

 

She then went on to share her vocational experiences as a nurse.

 

Although she started her nursing program just out of high school she won’t call it a “calling”. It just seemed to be the best option at the time.  She shared that her mother is a nurse.  Her mother always shared that as a nurse she could pursue a large variety of roles in the field of nursing.

 

She started her nursing career at Springfield Hospital working permanent nights, a challenging job. She was there for a year and half and then decided to become a traveling nurse.  [Travel nursing is a nursing assignment concept that developed in response to the nursing shortage. This industry supplies nurses who travel to work in temporary nursing positions, mostly in hospitals.]

 

As a traveler she headed to the Dallas area.  This is where she met her husband.  Once they had children they returned to the Upper Valley.  She was able to work per diem to avoid having her kids in daycare.  Once the kids started school, she was bored and made the decision to back to school to get her Master’s degree. 

 

Liss then accepted a position at Alice Peck Day Hospital prior to accepting her current job at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), where she accepted the position of Director Nursing Staffing Support, Patient Flow, and Nursing Management Systems. 

 

 

She works with a cadre of  emergency and intensive care nurses who help triage patients to assure they get the patients into the correct facility within the DHMC system and at correct level of care. She reminded us that patients come into the DHMC system both internally, and externally.  Arriving as planned admissions, arriving in the emergency room, and coming in to the system from outlying facilities that are either a part of DHMC or external to DHMC.  When capacity is tight, this can be a complicated process. 

 

In addition, she is working to develop a very flexible cadre of registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, licensed nursing assistants and medical assistants to help cover unmet staffing need across the entire DHMC network which includes DHMC hospital affiliates, group practices, and Dick’s House at Dartmouth.  Her department received over 5,000 requests each month, and on average the flex team is able to fill 40% of the vacancies.  Liss also helps areas find traveling nursing to cover long term vacancies.

 

Liss said that prior to joining Rotary, she only thought of Rotary as doing  Penny Sales in Springfield.  She express her gratitude to Karen Clements to introducing her to Rotary.  She enjoys our fellowship, and all of our service projects.