Director Candidate
Jaime Stephens Davenport
MSN, RN, CEN, CPEN, CFRN, CTRN, CCRN, NE-BC, TCRN
Kentucky
UKedrn09@gmail.com
Why do you seek a position on the ENA Board of Directors?
After obtaining my master’s degree in nursing leadership and working for several years as an ED charge nurse and house supervisor, leadership has taken on a new meaning for me. I want to walk beside my fellow nurses in my professional practice, while leaning on my formal leadership education and experience to impact our profession. In seeking this position, my desire is to positively impact emergency nursing from the stretcher-side as someone my peers can look to when they feel they aren’t seen. So many volunteer nursing leadership positions are held by executive nursing leaders and not informal leaders, who in many cases have greater influence and insight into the needs of the stretcher-side nurse. As someone who has the benefit of interacting with emergency nurses in all settings, trauma centers (adult and pediatric), critical access, and regional care facilities, I want to be the person that helps make the decisions that will positively impact their practice while fulfilling the mission, vision, and values of the ENA.
How does your academic, professional background and experience within ENA make you a qualified Board candidate?
Professionally, I spent 5 years as the Charge Nurse of a 100+ bed academic level 1 adult and pediatric emergency department. This included supervisory responsibilities for a community ED on the other side of campus. Duties included staffing/daily fiduciary responsibilities based on census, bed placement and throughput, coordinating with capacity command, and multidisciplinary interactions. However, the time I spent as a House Supervisor at a community hospital prepared me for true cooperative, professional interaction in ways I never imagined. Small hospital culture is vastly different from large academic institutions and requires communicating in a more diplomatic way. I learned how to work cooperatively together, to truly find ways to achieve a common goal. I also spent 6 months as an interim director of a 20-bed medical surgical unit. Although I had experience managing staffing levels against census and throughput, I was finally exposed to the business side of leadership and accountability. I brought these skills when I joined the Education Planning Committee and became co-chair in 2020. With these experiences, I have learned the meaning of professional collaboration and respect and gained the ability to contribute constructively in groups and discussions without taking offense.
Outline the specific skills you bring, or contributions you hope to make to the ENA Board of Directors.
I bring with me to the Board of Directors excellent communication skills, respect for professional collaboration and a very dedicated work ethic. I want to see the profession of emergency nursing advance and feel that can only be done through the involvement of ENA in its future. I hope to contribute to that future by being directly involved in the business and policy of ENA by securing a seat on the Board of Directors.
Provide a narrative that exemplifies how you demonstrate the Board competencies.
Through my professional practice and time with ENA, I have extensive experience with effective large and small group collaboration, decision making, strategic thinking, leadership planning, and professionalism. I have been faced with many situations that have required one to think and act with the best interest of something larger than me in mind. During COVID, I had to make so many decisions, suffer so much disappointment but still look towards the future. The hardest part was to do it with joy, which is what leading this group to its first ever virtual conference accomplished. At a time of so much personal heartbreak, I got to help make the decisions that would change the future. Leading a unit of nurses at a small community hospital through a global pandemic gave me what ENA and my past practice had yet to provide. This experience rounded out my knowledge of business acumen enabling me to speak in an educated way about budgets, strategies, and upcoming plans for the institution.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
No current conflicts disclosed.
