{"id":9416,"date":"2015-07-13T11:22:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T15:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9416"},"modified":"2015-09-24T14:32:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T18:32:28","slug":"nursing-alumna-is-playing-a-key-role-in-fixing-the-veterans-health-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9416","title":{"rendered":"Nursing alumna is playing a key role in fixing the Veterans Health Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Donna
Donna Hart Gage \u201981<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three days before Donna Hart Gage \u201981 was set to start her new job as the Veterans Health Administration\u2019s chief nursing officer, she learned from the evening news that the man who hired her\u2014former Under Secretary for Health Robert A. Petzel, MD\u2014had been fired and that her new employer faced a mounting scandal.<\/p>\n

It was June 2014, two months after officials in the Phoenix VA Health Care System had been accused of manipulating waiting lists to hide long patient delays. The allegations had extended to other VA hospitals, and the FBI announced a criminal investigation just three weeks before Gage reported for her first day of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the scandal broke, everyone kept asking me, Are you really still going to go work there? \u2018Are you crazy?\u2019 says Gage. \u201cI said, \u2018Yes, but I can\u2019t help them from the outside. I can only give them my best and try to work with them if I\u2019m on the inside.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, one of her top priorities has been the Advanced Practice Registered Nurse<\/p>\n

Initiative. It will allow all advanced practice nurses in VA facilities to work as independent licensed practitioners, even in states that traditionally require physician oversight in matters of diagnosing and treating, and prescribing medication. The initiative \u201chad been sitting there for three years when I got here,\u201d says Gage. \u201cBut I have support from the administration, and we are getting ready to put it into the federal registry and move it forward. I\u2019m very pleased about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As chief nurse of the largest healthcare system in the country, Gage says she wants to \u201cbring nursing to the table\u201d during high-level decision-making. \u201cI am beginning to change the culture of having nurses be a part of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

After studying nursing at the college, Gage worked as a clinical nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and then became a nurse manager at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. She worked her way up the administrative ladder there, ultimately serving as chief nursing officer from 2001 through 2011.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes there\u2019s a gap created when people move into administrative roles\u2014to know and understand what\u2019s still happening at the bedside,\u201d she says. \u201cI never lost that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for her work with the VA post-scandal, Gage is frank: \u201cI\u2019m trying to learn all that I can about the past, so that going forward we don\u2019t repeat history and things that didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Molly Petrilla<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three days before Donna Hart Gage \u201981 was set to start her new job as the Veterans Health Administration\u2019s chief nursing officer, she learned from the evening news that the man who hired her\u2014former Under Secretary for Health Robert A. Petzel, MD\u2014had been fired and that her new employer faced a mounting scandal. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":9396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-summer-2015"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}