Richard Hader Visionary Leader Award
2014 Visionary Leader Sylvain Trepanier DNP, RN, CENP
By Patricia “Pidge” Gooch, MSN, RN, CENP The following manuscript is the winning Richard Hader Visionary Leader 2014 entry submitted to Nursing Management in recognition of Sylvain Trepanier, DNP, RN, CENP, system CNO at Premier Health in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Trepanier was formally recognized for his achievements during the opening ceremony of Congress14, October 14, Las Vegas, Nev. There, he received the award, sponsored by Meridian Health.
www.nursingmanagement.com
r. Sylvain “Syl” Trepanier is a nationally certified nurse executive who exemplifies the practice of nursing as both an art and a science. Since coming to the United States in 1997 from Canada as a travel nurse in South Florida, Dr. Trepanier has consistently promoted caring and competence by maintaining the perspective that our patients need a nurse at every level of decision making across the healthcare continuum. Dr. Trepanier currently influences the practice of over 4,500 nurses in Southwest Ohio as the system vice president and CNO for a hospital network. In this role, he uses every opportunity, including formal leader rounding, to exemplify excellence in his interactions with staff members, patients, physicians, and colleagues. His vision and innovative approach has led to the deployment of a new system
D
Nursing Management • January 2015 31
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
2014 Visionary Leader
community-based longitudinal plan of care where case management is leading this effort from the outside community in acute care.
Positive work environment As a director of emergency services/cardiac catheterization lab, Dr. Trepanier was part of a team of nurse leaders who created a working environment that was recognized as a “destination nursing hospital” by The Advisory Board, as well as the number one workplace in the world measured by the Gallup Organization. The facility was recognized in part because of Dr. Trepanier’s ability to engage the entire workforce and conduct meaningful rounding before it was identified as a best practice by patient engagement leaders. As a CNO in Miami, Dr. Trepanier increased employee engagement by implementing the FISH philosophy and promoting staff engagement activities. He was recognized for his visibility, vision, and expertise. He inspired an inner city community-based hospital to become “world famous” and motivated everyone to rally behind him. It wasn’t uncommon to see him assisting nurses with clinical activities. His colleagues would often find him covering a nurse in the ED so that the nurse could have lunch, while he skipped his meal. Alternatively, if a patient was waiting in the ED for a bed to be cleaned on an inpatient unit, Dr. Trepanier was on the unit with a mop in hand cleaning the room. Dr. Trepanier supports and promotes education and lifelong learning for all nurses. Examples include arranging a partnership between his previous employer and an academic organization with national presence and developing letters of agreement offering nurse leaders the opportu-
nity to advance in their profession with a tuition reduction. Early in his tenure as a regional chief nurse executive (CNE) for a healthcare system based in the southwest United States, Dr. Trepanier assisted in the development of a system-wide shared leadership structure across 49 acute care hospitals. Through Dr. Trepanier’s guidance and role modeling, seven additional CNOs pursued doctorate-level education, increasing the number of doctoralprepared nurse leaders by 20% within the organization.
Clinical practice As a CNO in south Florida, Dr. Trepanier led an ED task force that decreased the rate of patients leaving without treatment by 50% over a 3-month period. During his tenure as a CNO at another hospital based in south Florida, Dr. Trepanier implemented a rapid assessment team, shared governance, and an evidencebased nurse residency program for new graduate nurses while achieving a significant increase in quality and outcome metrics. As a regional CNE, Dr. Trepanier supported 11 hospital CNOs (over 2,100 licensed beds; 100,000 inpatient visits; over 800,000 outpatient encounters; and over 4,500 RNs). He continued his support of nurse residency programs for newly licensed nurses and deployed those programs in 26 hospitals (he extended his expertise to several other states). The implementation of the residency programs resulted in a significant decrease of turnover and a cost avoidance over $8 million for a healthcare system based in the southwest United States. In this regional CNE role, he also chaired a national interdisciplinary fall prevention team that successfully developed and implemented a falls prevention toolkit in 49 acute care
32 January 2015 • Nursing Management
hospitals. This resulted in a reduction of falls with injuries by 58.3% over a 2-year period and avoided $775,000 in costs. Dr. Trepanier also implemented processes as a regional CNE that led to an overall compliance rate of 98.7% for nursing sensitive core measures.
Transformational leadership As a strong advocate for succession planning and growth, in two different facilities Dr. Trepanier developed assistant CNO positions to mentor and coach rising nurse leaders. In his current role as system CNO, his visionary leadership of case management and nursing synergies led to the implementation of a standardized discharge huddle process across all hospitals, which decreased the length of stay by 13% in 4 months. Within his first 6 months as the system CNO, Dr. Trepanier’s vision and guidance to the hospital CNOs on the current nursing resource allocations identified a significant savings. As a visionary and risk taker, he supported and promoted the deployment of a pilot project aimed at decreasing readmission for adult users of acute care services. This project fully embraces the new paradigm of offering services that add value as opposed to volume. The project required additional resources to support a community-based “navigator team.” The team developed a longitudinal plan of care in collaboration with primary care providers. Within 90 days, the pilot offered a 57% reduction in readmission among adults included in the pilot (sample of convenience). The pilot project is now being introduced in other acute care hospitals and is expected to yield a top system performance readmission rate. The work has been identified as www.nursingmanagement.com
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
innovative and will be featured nationally during The Advisory Board System Chief Nursing Executive Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
Mentoring Of all of Dr. Trepanier’s gifts that he brings to the practice of professional nursing, none is as extraordinary as his dedication to mentoring aspiring nurse leaders across the United States. He participates in both formal and informal mentor relationships, with some of these relationships lasting many years. Dr. Trepanier is an adjunct professor in nursing administration programs and also serves as a preceptor for nurse administrators during clinical rotations. He opens the door to experiences that future nurse administrators require to grow in their career by exposing them to the inside world of a nurse executive. He guides them by sharing his expertise to help students learn to navigate the real world of power and politics in healthcare organizations. He inspires them to take risks to lead innovative strategies that improve patient care, the health of populations, and the cost-effectiveness of healthcare. He agreed to coach and mentor two doctoral students who are also CNOs in large healthcare systems (Texas and Florida). He also mentors two CNOs who are new in their role (in Texas and California). Dr. Trepanier has many students seeking him out as a preceptor for their MSN administration clinical experience. What sets Dr. Trepanier apart is how he mentors students and the unique experiences he provides while serving as a preceptor. During clinical rotations, he provides one-on-one time to debrief after administrative meetings and other clinical experiences. He also provides graduate students with the opportunity to continue the mentoring www.nursingmanagement.com
relationship with him after the formal preceptor period ends. The ideal mentor offers perspective based on experience that’s designed to benefit others in a payit-forward model. Dr. Trepanier does this in a variety of ways, including one-on-one sessions, formal presentations, discussions, and one-on-one observations in the work
result, that nurse leader, now a CNO practicing in California, still uses lessons learned from that experience today as she mentors others: “I witnessed [Dr. Trepanier] come under verbal attack from all sides. He never lost sight of the fact that he was the nurse leader responsible for the competency and quality of the nursing care throughout hospital,
Dr. Trepanier’s visionary and transformational leadership has led to clinical practice innovation on both a local acute care hospital and national healthcare corporate level. setting. For example, an MSN administration student requested him as a preceptor in 2008 while Dr. Trepanier was the CNO for an acute care facility in south Florida. The student spent a semester “shadowing” Dr. Trepanier during his daily routine of meetings and activities with the intention of instituting a shared governance model at the hospital. Early in the semester, there was an adverse patient event that required an immediate stop-the-line response and cancellation of all nursing leaders’ approved vacation time to formulate the plan of correction. There was also an angry response from the public to the event, which involved medical staff leadership, but was solely directed toward nursing leadership. To Dr. Trepanier’s credit, he didn’t deny the student access to any of his meetings or interactions, no matter how uncomfortable the meetings were to all parties involved. As a
and he bore that responsibility with integrity and honor. He never lost his cool, his temper, or his focus on preventing an event like that from happening ever again to a patient in his hospital. He was the nurse leader that told me that as a CNO ‘I’m the voice of and for the patient and that I must never forget it.’ I pass that experience on to every emerging nurse leader I have the honor to mentor, so in effect, Dr. Trepanier is mentoring them too, albeit from a distance.”
Leadership development His passion for leadership development is now recognized nationally. In 2012, he was the recipient of the prestigious “Excellence in Leadership Award” by the Texas Organization of Nurse Executives. In the fall of 2013, he was asked to address DNP students and aspiring nurse leaders in two separate national venues. At the VHA
Nursing Management • January 2015 33
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
2014 Visionary Leader
Nursing Leadership Institute, he discussed leadership and transformational changes. His presentation provided the opportunity for multiple interactions between him and the attendees where he offered case studies and innovative strategies to address current nursing leadership issues. Based on the feedback from evaluations, participants were highly satisfied with his presentation and some wrote comments about how he inspired them to pursue leadership roles in the future. At the American Association of Colleges of Nursing: Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence, he was invited to address DNP students. In this presentation, he inspired these students to identify innovative ways
to advance their leadership potential and identify ways to leverage DNP education in an era of transformational changes. Dr. Trepanier also serves as faculty for a Texas-based organization committed to building and sustaining world class nursing executive teams. With this organization, he acts as a consultant in curriculum development and delivery of content, and mentor and coach for newly appointed and aspiring nurse executive.
A true visionary Dr. Trepanier is an outstanding nurse executive who’s committed to promoting a positive work environment. His visionary and
34 January 2015 • Nursing Management
transformational leadership has led to clinical practice innovation on both a local acute care hospital and national healthcare corporate level. He inspires others with a vision for the future. He welcomes mentoring relationships and seeks to transform a strong leader into an exceptional leader. He is committed to mentoring aspiring nurse leaders, supporting the professional development of his colleagues, and serving as a mentor throughout the United States. NM Nomination author Patricia “Pidge” Gooch is the chief nursing officer at Doctors Hospital of Manteca in Calif. The author has disclosed that she has no financial relationships related to this article. DOI-10.1097/01.NUMA.0000459099.79105.da
www.nursingmanagement.com
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
2014 Visionary Leader Sylvain Trepanier DNP, RN, CENP
By Patricia “Pidge” Gooch, MSN, RN, CENP The following manuscript is the winning Richard Hader Visionary Leader 2014 entry submitted to Nursing Management in recognition of Sylvain Trepanier, DNP, RN, CENP, system CNO at Premier Health in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Trepanier was formally recognized for his achievements during the opening ceremony of Congress14, October 14, Las Vegas, Nev. There, he received the award, sponsored by Meridian Health.
www.nursingmanagement.com
r. Sylvain “Syl” Trepanier is a nationally certified nurse executive who exemplifies the practice of nursing as both an art and a science. Since coming to the United States in 1997 from Canada as a travel nurse in South Florida, Dr. Trepanier has consistently promoted caring and competence by maintaining the perspective that our patients need a nurse at every level of decision making across the healthcare continuum. Dr. Trepanier currently influences the practice of over 4,500 nurses in Southwest Ohio as the system vice president and CNO for a hospital network. In this role, he uses every opportunity, including formal leader rounding, to exemplify excellence in his interactions with staff members, patients, physicians, and colleagues. His vision and innovative approach has led to the deployment of a new system
D
Nursing Management • January 2015 31
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
2014 Visionary Leader
community-based longitudinal plan of care where case management is leading this effort from the outside community in acute care.
Positive work environment As a director of emergency services/cardiac catheterization lab, Dr. Trepanier was part of a team of nurse leaders who created a working environment that was recognized as a “destination nursing hospital” by The Advisory Board, as well as the number one workplace in the world measured by the Gallup Organization. The facility was recognized in part because of Dr. Trepanier’s ability to engage the entire workforce and conduct meaningful rounding before it was identified as a best practice by patient engagement leaders. As a CNO in Miami, Dr. Trepanier increased employee engagement by implementing the FISH philosophy and promoting staff engagement activities. He was recognized for his visibility, vision, and expertise. He inspired an inner city community-based hospital to become “world famous” and motivated everyone to rally behind him. It wasn’t uncommon to see him assisting nurses with clinical activities. His colleagues would often find him covering a nurse in the ED so that the nurse could have lunch, while he skipped his meal. Alternatively, if a patient was waiting in the ED for a bed to be cleaned on an inpatient unit, Dr. Trepanier was on the unit with a mop in hand cleaning the room. Dr. Trepanier supports and promotes education and lifelong learning for all nurses. Examples include arranging a partnership between his previous employer and an academic organization with national presence and developing letters of agreement offering nurse leaders the opportu-
nity to advance in their profession with a tuition reduction. Early in his tenure as a regional chief nurse executive (CNE) for a healthcare system based in the southwest United States, Dr. Trepanier assisted in the development of a system-wide shared leadership structure across 49 acute care hospitals. Through Dr. Trepanier’s guidance and role modeling, seven additional CNOs pursued doctorate-level education, increasing the number of doctoralprepared nurse leaders by 20% within the organization.
Clinical practice As a CNO in south Florida, Dr. Trepanier led an ED task force that decreased the rate of patients leaving without treatment by 50% over a 3-month period. During his tenure as a CNO at another hospital based in south Florida, Dr. Trepanier implemented a rapid assessment team, shared governance, and an evidencebased nurse residency program for new graduate nurses while achieving a significant increase in quality and outcome metrics. As a regional CNE, Dr. Trepanier supported 11 hospital CNOs (over 2,100 licensed beds; 100,000 inpatient visits; over 800,000 outpatient encounters; and over 4,500 RNs). He continued his support of nurse residency programs for newly licensed nurses and deployed those programs in 26 hospitals (he extended his expertise to several other states). The implementation of the residency programs resulted in a significant decrease of turnover and a cost avoidance over $8 million for a healthcare system based in the southwest United States. In this regional CNE role, he also chaired a national interdisciplinary fall prevention team that successfully developed and implemented a falls prevention toolkit in 49 acute care
32 January 2015 • Nursing Management
hospitals. This resulted in a reduction of falls with injuries by 58.3% over a 2-year period and avoided $775,000 in costs. Dr. Trepanier also implemented processes as a regional CNE that led to an overall compliance rate of 98.7% for nursing sensitive core measures.
Transformational leadership As a strong advocate for succession planning and growth, in two different facilities Dr. Trepanier developed assistant CNO positions to mentor and coach rising nurse leaders. In his current role as system CNO, his visionary leadership of case management and nursing synergies led to the implementation of a standardized discharge huddle process across all hospitals, which decreased the length of stay by 13% in 4 months. Within his first 6 months as the system CNO, Dr. Trepanier’s vision and guidance to the hospital CNOs on the current nursing resource allocations identified a significant savings. As a visionary and risk taker, he supported and promoted the deployment of a pilot project aimed at decreasing readmission for adult users of acute care services. This project fully embraces the new paradigm of offering services that add value as opposed to volume. The project required additional resources to support a community-based “navigator team.” The team developed a longitudinal plan of care in collaboration with primary care providers. Within 90 days, the pilot offered a 57% reduction in readmission among adults included in the pilot (sample of convenience). The pilot project is now being introduced in other acute care hospitals and is expected to yield a top system performance readmission rate. The work has been identified as www.nursingmanagement.com
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
innovative and will be featured nationally during The Advisory Board System Chief Nursing Executive Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
Mentoring Of all of Dr. Trepanier’s gifts that he brings to the practice of professional nursing, none is as extraordinary as his dedication to mentoring aspiring nurse leaders across the United States. He participates in both formal and informal mentor relationships, with some of these relationships lasting many years. Dr. Trepanier is an adjunct professor in nursing administration programs and also serves as a preceptor for nurse administrators during clinical rotations. He opens the door to experiences that future nurse administrators require to grow in their career by exposing them to the inside world of a nurse executive. He guides them by sharing his expertise to help students learn to navigate the real world of power and politics in healthcare organizations. He inspires them to take risks to lead innovative strategies that improve patient care, the health of populations, and the cost-effectiveness of healthcare. He agreed to coach and mentor two doctoral students who are also CNOs in large healthcare systems (Texas and Florida). He also mentors two CNOs who are new in their role (in Texas and California). Dr. Trepanier has many students seeking him out as a preceptor for their MSN administration clinical experience. What sets Dr. Trepanier apart is how he mentors students and the unique experiences he provides while serving as a preceptor. During clinical rotations, he provides one-on-one time to debrief after administrative meetings and other clinical experiences. He also provides graduate students with the opportunity to continue the mentoring www.nursingmanagement.com
relationship with him after the formal preceptor period ends. The ideal mentor offers perspective based on experience that’s designed to benefit others in a payit-forward model. Dr. Trepanier does this in a variety of ways, including one-on-one sessions, formal presentations, discussions, and one-on-one observations in the work
result, that nurse leader, now a CNO practicing in California, still uses lessons learned from that experience today as she mentors others: “I witnessed [Dr. Trepanier] come under verbal attack from all sides. He never lost sight of the fact that he was the nurse leader responsible for the competency and quality of the nursing care throughout hospital,
Dr. Trepanier’s visionary and transformational leadership has led to clinical practice innovation on both a local acute care hospital and national healthcare corporate level. setting. For example, an MSN administration student requested him as a preceptor in 2008 while Dr. Trepanier was the CNO for an acute care facility in south Florida. The student spent a semester “shadowing” Dr. Trepanier during his daily routine of meetings and activities with the intention of instituting a shared governance model at the hospital. Early in the semester, there was an adverse patient event that required an immediate stop-the-line response and cancellation of all nursing leaders’ approved vacation time to formulate the plan of correction. There was also an angry response from the public to the event, which involved medical staff leadership, but was solely directed toward nursing leadership. To Dr. Trepanier’s credit, he didn’t deny the student access to any of his meetings or interactions, no matter how uncomfortable the meetings were to all parties involved. As a
and he bore that responsibility with integrity and honor. He never lost his cool, his temper, or his focus on preventing an event like that from happening ever again to a patient in his hospital. He was the nurse leader that told me that as a CNO ‘I’m the voice of and for the patient and that I must never forget it.’ I pass that experience on to every emerging nurse leader I have the honor to mentor, so in effect, Dr. Trepanier is mentoring them too, albeit from a distance.”
Leadership development His passion for leadership development is now recognized nationally. In 2012, he was the recipient of the prestigious “Excellence in Leadership Award” by the Texas Organization of Nurse Executives. In the fall of 2013, he was asked to address DNP students and aspiring nurse leaders in two separate national venues. At the VHA
Nursing Management • January 2015 33
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
2014 Visionary Leader
Nursing Leadership Institute, he discussed leadership and transformational changes. His presentation provided the opportunity for multiple interactions between him and the attendees where he offered case studies and innovative strategies to address current nursing leadership issues. Based on the feedback from evaluations, participants were highly satisfied with his presentation and some wrote comments about how he inspired them to pursue leadership roles in the future. At the American Association of Colleges of Nursing: Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence, he was invited to address DNP students. In this presentation, he inspired these students to identify innovative ways
to advance their leadership potential and identify ways to leverage DNP education in an era of transformational changes. Dr. Trepanier also serves as faculty for a Texas-based organization committed to building and sustaining world class nursing executive teams. With this organization, he acts as a consultant in curriculum development and delivery of content, and mentor and coach for newly appointed and aspiring nurse executive.
A true visionary Dr. Trepanier is an outstanding nurse executive who’s committed to promoting a positive work environment. His visionary and
34 January 2015 • Nursing Management
transformational leadership has led to clinical practice innovation on both a local acute care hospital and national healthcare corporate level. He inspires others with a vision for the future. He welcomes mentoring relationships and seeks to transform a strong leader into an exceptional leader. He is committed to mentoring aspiring nurse leaders, supporting the professional development of his colleagues, and serving as a mentor throughout the United States. NM Nomination author Patricia “Pidge” Gooch is the chief nursing officer at Doctors Hospital of Manteca in Calif. The author has disclosed that she has no financial relationships related to this article. DOI-10.1097/01.NUMA.0000459099.79105.da
www.nursingmanagement.com
Copyright © 2015 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
