Vice President-Chief Nursing Officer
New York Presbyterian-Lower Manhattan Hospital
New York, NY
Bernadette is the Vice President of Nursing and Chief Nursing Officer at New York Presbyterian-Lower Manhattan Hospital. This facility is the 6th site of New York Presbyterian Hospital, a 2,600 bed academic medical center that provides patient care, teaching, research, and community service to a large and diverse population in New York City. It is the teaching hospital for two major universities, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medical College.
As Chief Nursing Officer, Bernadette has responsibility for ensuring that the Nursing care delivered at NYP/Lower Manhattan Hospital is of the highest quality. In this role she is responsible for planning, organizing and directing the overall operations of Nursing/Patient Care Services. She is recognized as someone that leads the advancement of collaborative partnerships with physician leaders, administrative leaders and interdisciplinary teams to deliver excellent outcomes in patient care across clinical departments.
Prior to becoming Vice President at NYP/Lower Manhattan Hospital, Bernadette was the Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of New York Downtown Hospital. She was in this role for one year until the hospital merged with New York Presbyterian Hospital as its 6th site. In this role as CNO, Bernadette participated in the evacuation of patients from the hospital during super storm Sandy. She provided nursing leadership in several initiatives at the Hospital many of which involved preparing the hospital for its merger. On July 1, 2013, New York Downtown Hospital successfully merged with New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Before going to New York Downtown Hospital, Bernadette was the Vice President of Specialty Services at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. In this role she was responsible for the coordination and delivery of nursing care in the Women's and Children department as well as the Burn Center. Some of the Hospital initiatives that she was involved in included being the nursing lead in the roll out of a new upgraded electronic medical record at the organization. She was also co-leader of the nursing electronic documentation committee and worked collaboratively with other disciplines to enhance the medical record. Bernadette worked with a multidisciplinary team to implement Rapid Response Teams across this multi site organization. Later, she again provided nursing leadership in the patient throughput initiative by joining the Greater New York Hospital Association collaboration on Real Time Demand Capacity. Out of this work, Barrier Reduction Teams were created. These teams addressed barriers to discharges at a local level engaging front line staff.
Bernadette received her BSN (magna cum laude) and MSN degrees from Hunter College in NYC. She is board certified as an Advanced Nurse Executive by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. She is a member of Sigma Theta Tau and New York Organization of Nurse Executives.