NAHANT — Joanne Fucile’s leadership at Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Medical Care in Cambridge has not gone unnoticed.
Fucile (RN, DNP, CRRN, NEA-BC) was recently awarded the 2021 Mary B. Conceison Award for Excellence in Nursing Leadership from the Organization of Nurse Leaders. The ONL is made up of 1,100 nurses from all over New England.
The Nahant resident said that it’s very humbling to receive an award for the work that she does as a nurse leader.
“As a nurse leader, I feel like my job is to make sure that my staff and my team have the skills and the equipment they need to safely take care of patients,” she said. “I’m not someone who looks for this type of recognition. I’m much more comfortable recognizing my staff, but it’s an incredible honor to have this award that indicates from the ONL, which I have been a member of for over 30 years, and I was on the board for seven years. “
At Spaulding Hospital Cambridge, Fucile works in a long-term acute care facility taking care of oncology, pulmonary, cardiac care, neurology/stroke, post-organ transplant and post-surgical patients.
Many hospitals had to deal with the difficult challenge of handling the COVID-19 pandemic; Fucile, aware of the impact of the ongoing pandemic, established a specialized COVID recovery clinic at the hospital last year.
The patients at the hospital were already very sick before COVID became a factor; Fucile and her staff were already treating patients on ventilators, so there were numerous challenges that the staff had to face.
“(One of) the initial challenges I had was when we were asked to convert four of our units to COVID-positive units to be able take patients out of the acute-care hospitals and provide them extended medical care, and also give them therapy services which they all need to get their functional status back,” she said.
Fucile added that she had to figure out where she would put patients who were already at the hospital and then determine the best treatment options for them. Then Fucile needed to figure out how to create a safe environment for patients and their families, which she said involved having engineers coming into the facility to look at the airflow of each unit.
“I was lucky that I was able to reach out to Mass General, and we did a tour of one of their units,” she said. “Their infection control lead, who I know personally, came over and walked through our units before we opened them up to make sure that we had done everything appropriately.”
When it comes to being a leader, Fucile believes that one needs to be compassionate and have integrity, among other characteristics.
“A leader needs to be truthful even during the most difficult times and recognize the value each employee brings to the team. We also need to celebrate each victory and provide support to our teams during the difficult times,” she said.
While Fucile said that 2020 was the most challenging year of her career, she added that she was very proud to have led an incredible team through the darkest days of the pandemic.
