Inside Duke Medicine
Meet a Great Nurse: Yvette West
posted August 11th, 2010Yvette West, RN, MSN, CNS, in Advanced Clinical Practice, is one of nine DUHS nurses named a Great 100.
Yvette is also the director of Duke NICHE, Nurses Improving Care for Health System Elders.
Yvette has spent most of her career at Duke working in the operating room, and two years ago she had with the opportunity to create the NICHE program. Since her masters is in geriatrics, she was excited to take on this new role.
"To be able to develop and build a new program that didn't exist here at Duke, was very exciting and challenging," Yvette says.
NICHE is a collaboration between DUHS and the DUSON that trains nursing staff at the point of care to provide evidence based practice for geriatrics.
Yvette works very closely with nurses to help them develop projects of their own that are focused on improving care for the elderly.
"We look at the literature and evidence based guidelines related to problems they identify on their unit," she explains.
Yvette says their work is resulting in some "unbelievable outcomes." They have seen especially good outcomes with a project to treat delirium.
"It's very gratifying and a lot of fun," she says. "And, it's great working with the staff."
Read more about the other eight DUHS nurses named to the Great 100 Nurses in North Carolina.