Barbara Stewart has joined The Westerly Hospital as director of performance improvement. She is responsible for patient satisfaction, patient complaints, case management, utilization review, social services, infection control and the medical staff office. Stewart previously worked as quality and compliance manager at Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and her master’s degree from Boston College. She lives in Narragansett.
PBN: What are your duties in your new job?
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Stewart: I have responsibility for the hospital Performance Improvement Program and manage the following departments/functions: Care Management, Utilization Review, Social Services, Patient Satisfaction, Patient Complaints, Medical Staff Office, Sentinel Event Review and Infection Control.
PBN: What are the benefits of working in this atmosphere?
Stewart: All hospital atmospheres are not the same. The benefit of working in a first class community hospital, such as The Westerly Hospital, is to be able to work with a multidisciplinary team of professionals who are dedicated to the patients and the community they serve.
PBN: What inspires you about your position?
Stewart: It is exciting to work in an environment with professionals and management who are dedicated to providing high quality care. My motivation is the opportunity to mentor and facilitate processes that contribute to the provision of that high quality care.
PBN: What is your professional goal?
Stewart: My professional goal has always been to coach and mentor others. In home care clinical practice my goal was to teach patients to be independent in their care, when I was an assistant professor at Rhode Island College my goal was to coach and mentor students to become expert practitioners and now in management my goal is to mentor the staff in their performance improvement endeavors.
PBN: Who has been your mentor or role model?
Stewart: The role models who truly framed my mentoring approach to the practice of nursing were the undergraduate nursing faculty at the University of Michigan. When I later moved into management, Karen Bowman, who was the Director/CEO at Visiting Nurse Association of Rhode Island, role-modeled the coach/mentor role in health care administration.
