NEW YORK NURSE: September 2010
Margaret Governo of Wagner College’s School of Nursing has been named the school’s National League for Nursing (NLN) Ambassador. The associate professor will serve as a two-way link between the nursing program and the NLN. Governo is a family nurse practitioner and a board-certified clinical specialist psychiatric nurse practitioner. Her broad array of specialties include cultural diversity in healthcare, psychiatric-community mental health, professional role development, issues of family dynamics, complementary integrative healing models, project development for health promotion, and conflict resolution. She is a former member of the board of the Visiting Nurse Association of Staten Island, a board of directors gubernatorial appointee to the Board of Visitors for Mental Health, NYSNA’s Legislative District Coordinator for Staten Island and Brooklyn, a member of the Board of Advocates of Mental Health for South Richmond County, and past president of Wagner College’s Epsilon Mu chapter of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. The NLN is a membership organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education, offering faculty development programs, networking opportunities, testing and assessment, nursing research grants, and public policy initiatives.
Margaret ‘Peggy’ Leonard, senior vice president of clinical services at Hudson Health Plan, has been appointed to a five-year term with the New York State Board for Nursing. The board oversees RNs, NPs and LPNs, advising and assisting the Board of Regents and State Education Department regarding matters of professional regulation. Leonard is immediate past president of the Case Management Society of America and a past chair of the American Nurses Credentialing Center Nurse Case Management Expert Panel. Previously, she served with NYSNA’s Legislative Council and on NYSNA’s Political Action Committee Board of Trustees, and is a past president of NYSNA District 14. Leonard is currently involved with the National Transitions of Care Coalition, serving as a member of its Public Policy Task Force, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Technical Expert Panel on Hospital Readmissions within 30 Days, and the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities International. She was honored by NYSNA in 2004 for outstanding contributions to the protection of the public and advancement of the profession, and continues to teach the politics of healthcare as an adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle.
Cheryl Nicosia, a clinical nurse specialist at the Erie County Medical Center (ECMC), was awarded the Health and Human Services (HHS) Regional Champion Award for outstanding leadership in promoting organ donation and transplantation in the Western New York area. For the past fifteen years, Nicosia has been the liaison between Upstate New York Transplant Services (UNYTS) and ECMC. As HHS Regional Champion, she was recognized for continually striving “to ensure that a donor family’s needs are being met at such a traumatic and stressful time.” A Western New York native, she has been involved in critical care for 30 years, since graduating from D’Youville College. With her colleagues at UNYTS, she participated in a Health Resources and Services Administration Organ Donation & Transplantation National Breakthrough Collaborative bringing donation best practices to ECMC, and the surrounding community. ECMC is Western New York’s Regional Trauma Center, about which Nicosia says, “we do deal with a lot of heartache, but being able to facilitate the option of organ donation for families facing tragedy in the loss of a loved one is very rewarding.” To honor donors and their families, Nicosia helped implement a program that placed flowers in their memory on the Donate Life float at this year’s Rose Bowl Parade, and a Comforting Quilts program, gifting a handmade quilt—made by volunteers—on the bed of a consented organ donor, for families to keep as they work through their loss. There are currently 106,000 people in the U.S. awaiting life-saving transplants, including 10,000 from New York state alone.