2008 12 People You Need to Know: Karen Kramer

She’s served the health system as coordinator of children’s hospital services and the children’s heart center, and as director of The Women’s Center & Breast Care Clinic. From April 2006 to November 2007, Kramer was CoxHealth’s vice president of clinical services. On Dec. 3, 2007, however, she picked up another CoxHealth hat: vice president/chief nursing officer.

“I’ve learned from every single role I’ve had,” she says.

As CoxHealth’s VP of nursing, Kramer’s responsible for all inpatient-nursing operations and oversees pharmacy services. She also has the tough task of filling job openings during a nursing shortage.

While Kramer says the Springfield area is fortunate to have schools to educate nurses and other health care workers, more than one approach will be needed to address anticipated shortages.

“We need to do more to recruit (people) into the field and to encourage young people to consider nursing as a career,” she says. “One thing we could be looking at in this community is … the role of advanced-practice nurses, and how could we grow that.”

Such strategizing wasn’t necessarily written on Kramer’s early career manual. She expected to work in more hands-on roles.

“My first job was at Children’s Hospital in Denver,” she says. “They had … clinical nurse specialists (who did) a variety of things – help educate other nurses, work with families across the continuum of care and some hands-on nursing.”

That blend of administrative tasks and patient care was the career she wanted, but when Kramer came to Springfield, no clinical nurse specialist jobs were available, and her first job here was as a critical care nurse for St. John’s Hospital.

A new pediatric cardiology unit drew her to CoxHealth.

“I enjoyed the management and the community education pieces, marketing and some of the other aspects of health care,” Kramer says.

Kramer, who is a past president of the National Association for Women’s Health Foundation, says she misses daily work with patients, but that’s one of the tougher aspects of moving into administration.

“You don’t necessarily get experience with patients, and you’re hoping that the work you’re doing is helping to create the best possible environment for the people who are giving direct patient care, so that they can do their best possible work,” she says. “That keeps me going.”

Karen Kramer

Position: Vice president/chief nursing officer, CoxHealth

Age: 48

Education: Bachelor’s degree in nursing and master’s in health administration, University of Colorado

Career: Pediatric nurse; director of The Women’s Center; vice president of clinical services at CoxHealth

Q&A Date: Aug. 12