Maria Ducharme was promoted to president of The Miriam Hospital at the beginning of this year. Ducharme, a nurse and nursing executive who has spent her entire career of nearly 35 years at The Miriam, is the hospital’s third woman president. She is also the first nurse to be promoted from within to the role of president.
Ducharme previously served as senior vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer. She shares what’s kept her at The Miriam, and discusses the hospital’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
PBN: What is at the top of your to-do list during your first few months as president of The Miriam Hospital?
DUCHARME: The Miriam has a well-deserved and outstanding reputation for excellence and that’s because of our unwavering focus on our utmost priority – our patients. This can only be achieved through the devotion and hard work of our dedicated employees. I witnessed incredible courage and resilience this past year. However, those efforts took their toll.
My top priority now is reinvesting in and revitalizing our employees so that they can continue to put our patients first. I am seeking feedback from employees about what they’ve learned and experienced and how I can help support them in their work, and I am also engaging them in new hospital-wide collaborations to enhance patient safety and patient experiences.
PBN: What has kept you at The Miriam since you joined its staff in the late 1980s as a medical/surgical nurse?
DUCHARME: Without a doubt, it has been the people that have kept me at The Miriam Hospital – colleagues, mentors and community supporters. The Miriam Hospital is such a special place. We hear this all the time from our patients and their families. We never tire of the letters and calls we get – and share with our staff – praising the highly skilled and compassionate care that is so embedded in the culture here. I experienced that as a nurse on the floor in my early years and I’ve been fortunate, and honored, to be given ever more challenging opportunities to lead such an incredible team and institution.
PBN: You played a key role in helping to shape The Miriam’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. What happened at the hospital during those early weeks of the pandemic, and what is it like now inside The Miriam in regards to COVID-19?
DUCHARME: The Miriam received some of the first seriously ill COVID-19 patients in Rhode Island and those initial months – the first surge – were relentlessly challenging to our employees. Little was known about the virus and that was extremely discouraging for doctors, nurses and therapists who want nothing more than to heal patients and see them recover and go home quickly.
Because we all have been learning about the virus at the same time, hierarchies seemed to have slipped away and everyone is united in a common purpose. The esprit de corps that I have observed is unparalleled. Our understanding of how to treat patients has greatly improved and our efforts at preventing the spread of the virus – through concerted infection control practices, proper PPE [personal protective equipment] and vaccination – have been immensely successful. We are seeing fewer patients needing to go to our intensive care unit and, overall, our numbers of hospitalized COVID patients in recent weeks have thankfully dropped dramatically.
PBN: Do you foresee any permanent changes to hospital operations as a result of lessons learned from the pandemic?
DUCHARME: That’s an interesting and important question. They say necessity is the mother of invention and we have certainly created all sorts of new medical and administrative practices and policies that may turn out, in the long run, to be a better way of doing things.
So much has been learned about effective ways to prevent disease spread, alternative ways to communicate with families and each other using technology, and how we, as an institution, can remain resilient and better prepared should we face another public health crises.
We’re still in the midst of this pandemic, but I am certain that some of the great ideas that have surfaced will be embraced. It is an ideal time to address entrenched principles which may have prevented us from seeing things in a different manner.
PBN: You are the third woman president of The Miriam, which was founded by women in 1925. Do you notice more opportunities for women in health care now as opposed to when you began your career in 1987?
DUCHARME: The Miriam Hospital, which was founded after a small group of women began collecting coins to create a hospital for the Jewish community, has a long tradition of recognizing the contributions of women. In fact, a woman led The Miriam back in 1946. I am certainly honored to become the third woman president and I think that’s reflective of how The Miriam and our Lifespan [Corp.] affiliates have hired women into numerous top leadership positions throughout the system. There are certainly many opportunities for women in health care and I think those opportunities just continue to grow.
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN contributing writer.
