Neurology Clinical Nurse Specialist Dea Mahanes, APN

Dea Mahanes, APN, is a clinical nurse specialist for the neurocritical care unit and the neuro intermediate unit. She focuses on providing the best possible patient care by working directly with patients and staff. She develops systems that improve patient care and educates new staff through programs such as her “neuro bootcamp”.

Learn more at https://uvahealth.com/services/neuro/...

My name is Dea Mahanes. I’m a clinical nurse specialist for the neurocritical care unit and the neuro intermediate unit. My role as a clinical nurse specialist is focused on impacting the best possible patient care through working with patients and families directly, working with staff, and working at the systems level to improve the care we provide.

One of my areas of focus is putting into place systems that will help improve the quality of care that we provide to our patients. Examples of that might be standard work, policies, and procedures: things that will impact the care of patients across a population or across the system.

As a clinical nurse specialist, I provide education to our newer staff, and to some of our senior staff as well. I actually have a neuro bootcamp that all of our newer staff in the neuro ICU and the neuro intermediate unit attend.

It’s three 8-hour days, and we have a lot of guest lecturers as well. Some of the staff nurses come in and teach about their area of interest or expertise. Then we spend some time on the unit actually practicing some of the things, like neurological assessment, that the staff will need to know. It’s usually within their first six months of hire, but the timing varies depending on the number of folks that we have.

We spend one morning going from the discussion that happens at the unit level about quality and safety to the discussion that happens at the service line level, the neurosciences and behavioral health service line leadership meeting, the unit based leadership meeting. Then we attend the situation room so that we can see how that rolls up at the organizational level.