2023 Health Care Champions Administrator: Tessie Bowmaker

Tessie Bowmaker, nurse manager in the neurotrauma and cardiovascular intensive care unit at CoxHealth, says she is motivated by satisfactory outcomes for her patients, and that empathetic touch lends itself to the health system as a whole.

Bowmaker says she’s taken on multiple initiatives that have helped CoxHealth.

One example is the creation of an unlicensed direct care clinical ladder to help any people in unlicensed, patient care positions gain more access to opportunities within the health system and not be overlooked.

“Our hospital was struggling with retention in this area,” says Bowmaker, noting she collaborated with leaders and unlicensed staff across three campuses and multiple departments on the clinical ladder effort. “This program will help these staff members feel a part of the team and recognize them for the hard work they do.”

To assist nurses, Bowmaker created a dedicated rapid response team. It was a six-year effort before the proposal was approved for trial, but Bowmaker’s work and patience paid off.

“Our charge nurses in the critical care areas were spending hours away from their units responding to codes and rapid responses across the hospital,” she says. “I developed a plan with three options to allow our critical care charge nurses to sign up for shifts to be on a dedicated team that would respond to these emergencies, allowing our charge nurses to stay on their units to assist their staff.

“Not only did we get the trial approved, but also the entire program is now 24/7 on our main campus and we are looking at spreading it to our other campuses.”

The effort, Bowmaker says, has led to the prevention of multiple patient safety events and increased CoxHealth’s scores with the American Heart Association and the Get With The Guidelines quality improvement initiative.

It all comes back to patient outcomes.

“When I stepped into a leadership role, that motivation remained – but now it is done through my staff,” Bowmaker says. “When I have staff nurses fulfill their dreams by completing advanced degrees and excelling in their careers, it gives me great pleasure as I know I was a part of that process with the support I provide them.”

A veteran of the U.S. Army, Bowmaker additionally works to assist members of the military in the community with their health care needs. She’s also a health care provider at a local school, and she serves in that role, as well, at community sporting events and health care drives, such as free blood pressure checks for older adults.