Tufts MC True Blue Recipient: Melissa Quinn, RN, BSN, Clinical Nurse, Pediatric Gastroenterology
and Nutrition
Nomination from Jyoti Ramakrishna, MD, Chief, Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition:
“Melissa has been with our division for five years and with Pediatrics at Tufts Medical Center for 25 years. She is an amazing Pediatric Nurse who truly understands our patients
“Melissa answers a multitude of patient telephone calls on a daily basis. Parents often call quite distressed over a child with GI bleeding, cramping or vomiting—parents missing work, with children who are missing school. Melissa does a wonderful job of calming them down, figuring out what is going on and acting as a compassionate liaison to resolve complex issues. I cannot count the times I have been in clinic seeing a follow-up patient (who has never met Melissa but has spoken to her by telephone many times) and had the family spontaneously tell me how wonderful Melissa is and how much she helped them.
“Recently, Melissa has been the only experienced Clinical Nurse in our division. She has risen to the task, organizing her own life around infusions and food challenges, and making sure patients get the care they need. She pays meticulous attention to detail as we change from one biologic to another for our inflammatory bowel disease patients. She screens labs and alerts providers when they are abnormal. She scrambles to get labs from outside hospitals and calls patients back to check in on them. We sometimes get telephone calls from the floor or from the ED (or even from an outside hospital) about malfunctioning feeding tubes—Melissa will go out of her way to find or order a particular tube, just to help, even when it is clearly not someone directly under our care.
“Melissa is quiet yet eminently capable, providing excellent, compassionate care while remaining kind, calm and patient. The staff, providers and patients’ families love her and could not do without her! She has shown her True Blue colors over and over. She is the nurse you want at the bedside.”
