2015 Health Care Champions Critical Care/ICU Nurse: LeAnn Rens

In her nearly 35-year professional career, LeAnn Rens has worked to give new lives in danger a fighting chance.

After receiving her associate’s degree in nursing from Northland Community College in Thief River Falls, Minn., in 1981, LeAnn worked for 11 years coordinating staff and assessing patient needs as a neonatal nurse in the intensive care nursery of Sanford Medical Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., before moving to Springfield.

Since 1993, Rens has been an integral part of Mercy’s neonatal intensive care unit nursing staff, serving as a transport nurse, charge nurse and assistant nursing director.

“My reward comes when I have a baby who is critically, life-threateningly ill, and I watch them leave the NICU with their family to go out and become a ‘regular kid,’” Rens says. “I’ve done this long enough that some of my first NICU babies are college graduates, professional people or married with children of their own.”

From 1999 to 2012, Rens served as the nursing director of the NICU, during which she supervised the unit’s growth from 24 beds caring for an average of eight infants per day to 40 beds averaging 28 newborn patients. Part of her duties included researching and providing clinical oversight for the unit’s redesign and initial construction phases that upgraded the facility to 46 beds.

Rens, who also assisted in the development of the NICU’s bereavement program, says the space is one of her proudest achievements.

“Through site visits, design meetings and construction meetings, I remained the consistent clinical voice for a unit that was calming for families and staff, efficient and developmentally appropriate while remaining fiscally responsible,” she says.

Rens’ colleague of 20 years, Lynette Cummings, says her coworker should not only be proud of the new NICU which she helped to redesign but also the support that she provides to the nursing staff.

“As a coworker, I know I can count on her expertise and assistance at any critical infant’s bedside,” Cummings says. “She has been a mentor to many new nurses and is an excellent example of a true professional.”

During her last year as nursing director of the NICU, Rens received Mercy’s Nursing Excellence in Leadership Award. A 30-year member of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses who recently returned to bedside care for more hands-on experience, Rens also co-authored an article for the fall edition of neonatal field journal Newborn and Infant Nursing Reviews.

A former Girl Scouts troop leader for the Springfield region’s Dogwood Trails Council from 1998 to 2010, Rens is a 2006 recipient of the organization’s Caring Award as well as the Appreciation Award in 2008. Since 1998, she also has served as a volunteer in Hope Community Church’s infant and toddler nursery.

Whether her child care capacity is professional or charitable, Rens says the ability to influence new lives is a great motivator.

“I have a plaque that hung on my office wall and also hangs in my home: ‘One hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, what kind of car I drove or the kind of house I lived in. But the world may be a better place because I was important in the life of a child.’”