Stacy Petty, APRN – IDHI – Institute for Digital Health & Innovation
Please join the Center for Nursing Excellence in congratulating Stacy Petty, APRN for being selected as the DAISY Award recipient for the month of February!
Stacy works in IDHI – Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and was nominated by a physician. The nomination below reflects Stacy’s exemplary leadership.
“Stacy Petty is a licensed APRN and has been an exemplary frontline leader for UAMS and overall state of Arkansas during the COVID-19 pandemic and is an ideal recipient of a DAISY Award. Along with leaders at the UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation (IDHI), Stacy organized the statewide telemedicine response to COVID-19 through UAMS’ newly-launched telemedicine platform, UAMS HealthNow, which Stacy serves as APRN Coordinator/Manager. Since the pandemic arrived here in March 2020, UAMS has seen a 36-fold increase in the use of telemedicine. Overnight, the HealthNow platform, which launched only two months before, went from zero monthly COVID-19 screenings to over 600. As of November 19, 2020, Stacy has managed over 8,200 virtual screenings and roughly 1,500 visits resulting from those screenings.
In its regular daily operation, the HealthNow program allows Arkansans in any area of the state to access a nurse practitioner 24/7/365 for primary and urgent care. Stacy’s dedicated work helps to save patients from emergency department visits, reduce time off from work, reduce exposure to COVID-19, and other infectious diseases that may be present in a clinic. She readily took on this new program and worked diligently to get it going. She developed every protocol and communicated user-friendly advice to IT. This ensured a seamless video experience for HealthNow patients. When HealthNow ventured into the new territory of COVID-19 screening for the entire state, Stacy was engaged with her team and the UAMS Infection Prevention team, taking continuous calls, updating screening guidelines, and providing patients the most up-to-date information.
As screenings increased rapidly, Stacy recognized the volume would overwhelm her team’s resources. She helped implement an electronic triage protocol for patients called Virtriage, which identifies those patients who need live COVID-19 evaluation through HealthNow and those who do not. Stacy also connects with her team members to make sure their emotional needs are met during the tough work that the pandemic brings.
Stacy exhibits servant leadership not only through these efforts but additionally through extending this attitude to volunteer activities. Since the pandemic began affecting UAMS, she has volunteered at employee and patient temperature screening stations at UAMS entry points while also managing her team, seeing patients virtually, kicking off a new HIV prevention program, writing and submitting her first grant proposal with a team, working collaboratively with other areas of campus and other entities across the state, and filling her personal roles as wife and mother.
Stacy has taken on every new task with nothing less than absolute professionalism and a solutions-oriented approach. All of us at IDHI are honored to work with her and highly recommend her for this award.”
Great job, Stacy Petty!
To learn more about The DAISY Award or to nominate a deserving licensed nurse, please visit: http//nurses.uams.edu.