Page 23 - BusinessWest 2023 Healthcare Heroes

aspect of her work, even for things families don’t specifically bring in their kids for, like properly installing car seats.
“When we’re at the triage desk, we first bring the kid in, we make sure they’re safe, and then that’s another point where we can just educate them and do that community health and make sure everyone’s safe by teaching families simple things like car seats.”
Going beyond the basics is how Ingraham- Shaw has really made a difference, though, implementing new ideas in an organization she says is very interested in hearing them.
“My management team is just really open. We have a lot of freedom to do things,” she said, before giving another example in the behavioral-health realm.
“One of my co-workers and I, a few years ago, started a behavioral-health committee. We try to meet monthly, just to talk about what’s going on with the unit, trying to work on different projects,” she explained. “One thing we did was make an informational pamphlet for the families and the patients that come in for behavioral-health issues because the way we treat them is much different than other patients. And sometimes they’re there for a really long time. So we want to do what we can just to support the families a little bit more.”
Do Carmo praised Ingraham-Shaw for
identifying barriers in communication and creating a tool that has improved communication between nurses and patients. “Ellen works very closely with the behavioral-health team to ensure the behavioral-health population receives the needed care plans and treatments.”
Long-time Passion
Ingraham-Shaw’s interest in mental health was clear when she first studied psychology in college, but at the time, she couldn’t
have predicted how it would become an important aspect of her career.
“When I was looking for jobs, if I didn’t find a teaching job, I was looking for other psychology-related jobs,” she said, adding that she’s in graduate school now, working on her doctor of nursing practice degree (DNP) to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
“I always thought that was a possibility, but I didn’t think this was the route I’d take,” she said. “For nurse practitioners, at least, the education track is different. So you’re a nurse first, so you get that compassionate care and bedside manner down first. And then you start learning the more advanced things.”
Once she has her DNP, she said she’d like to stay in the pediatric arena, although she’s hoping to gain a wide range of experience through her clinical rotations.
“Baystate in general is very supportive of education,” she added, noting the system’s tuition-reimbursement and loan- forgiveness programs, in addition to its affiliation with UMass Medical School’s Springfield campus, which is where she’s taking her graduate track.
“One of the reasons why I chose that school is because they have a focus on diversity and behavioral health,” she noted. “So I’ve been working hard, but I have also been lucky to find myself in places, and around people, that are supportive and inspirational, and I’ve been given a lot of opportunities to focus on the things that I want to do.”
As part of her graduate education, Ingraham-Shaw is hoping to focus on opioid and overdose education in her scholarly project. “It’s something I’m passionate about, and I’ve done a lot of my own learning. So I’m hoping to do some more research and actually implement some projects with that.”
For her work creating and cultivating
a handful of truly impactful projects at Baystate already, but especially for the promise of what she and her colleagues have yet to come up with, Ingraham-Shaw is certainly an emerging leader in her field, and a Healthcare Hero. n
“I’ve been working hard, but I have also been lucky to find myself
in places,
and around people, that are supportive and inspirational, and I’ve been given a lot of opportunities
to focus on the things that I” want to do.
HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
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