Humanitas caught up with Brooke Baldwin, DNP, RN, NE-BC, when she was Chief Nursing Executive for UCI Health, with operational responsibility for more than 2,500 fulltime equivalent co-workers and 14 business units at the 459-licensed bed Magnet® facility. The role includes a shared vision with the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing for education, research, and nurse leadership. Brooke took up the position in 2020, after five years at Keck Hospital at USC, in Los Angeles, having previously held a series of nursing and management roles at UCI Health.
I don’t set an alarm. My natural body clock wakes me up between 4:00- 5:30 a.m. I’ve committed to take care of myself, so I do 30-40 minutes of exercise every day. I walk, jog or do yoga, and I’ll have tea or something.
Making my own food is part of the commitment to my health. Typically, I don’t eat breakfast till midmorning, so I bring food to work – maybe oatmeal, or eggs and green vegetables. I made this commitment two years ago and I’ve noticed a big difference.
Is there a typical workday? Yes and no. Each day I focus on different things according to schedule, but I always have an awareness of the same big picture. It involves three things: First, what we’re trying to achieve in terms of patient quality and safety. Second, my coworkers (which is what employees at UCI Health are called). What are they experiencing? Are we meeting their needs? And third, finances. Even if I’m deep in the minutiae, these things – the big bucket ideas – form the backdrop to all my thinking.
I work on site every day, and I walk around every chance I get. Out of a workforce of around 1,500 nurses, between 400-500 will be on site at any time. Even though many of my meetings are on Zoom, I need to be interacting.
I get to work at 7:30-8:30 a.m., and I’ll have scanned my emails, checked for reports of any safety events, and be ready for the interdisciplinary clinical operations huddle that happens at 8:30 each morning.
Nurses are the glue. I have 10-20 meetings a day and most of those meetings will be groups we need to bring together. A lot of our work is in teams.
You can’t have beds open without nurses. Having beds open brings in revenue and means care is available 24/7. Today I have a “Powered for Growth” meeting, where nurses look at the financial picture of a department. The CFO attends, as does the COO, and the Chief Strategy Officer. If there are financial issues, we come with a lens to help nurses understand what those are, and we work out what needs to be done to get back on budget. It’s very collaborative, very supportive.
Once a month, we have a shared governance day with the Research Council and the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. It’s for decisionmaking. The clinical education department will attend. We’ll look at evidence-based practice; we’ll interpret data coming in from frontline nursing staff and look at where that can be turned into research projects for nurses at UCI Health.
What does a great day at work look like? When there’s evidence that we’re making progress towards our organizational goals. For example, we’ve been promoting RNs and physicians rounding together. The results show improvements in the nurses’ education, in patient experience, and in the physicians being more engaged and present. This is work we’ve spent months designing. It’s great to be able to give recognition, to see the accomplishment and to share the excitement.
In reality, I’m on call 24/7. My day never ends! But I leave work at 5:00-6:00 p.m. I’m in bed by 8:30 p.m.
To relax, I’ll listen to music – any music! Reggae is my favorite. I dance in my kitchen. I don’t find cooking relaxing at all – I hate it! But I do it anyway. And I read before bed.
I’ve usually got two books on the go: one fiction, one nonfiction. I love suspense novels: something with psychological drama. The nonfiction book is usually something that informs my thoughts about leadership. Right now I’m reading The Persuaders: winning hearts and minds in a divided age by Anand Giridharadas.
I do my deep thinking on the weekends. I like to take really long hikes. That’s when I sort through my work challenges, vision, strategy – the big ideas.
