Making Rounds
Nursing Leadership transitions into next era
At South View Senior High School, Susan Dees played volleyball, basketball and softball and thought about being a basketball or softball coach. Fortunately for her patients, fate intervened and led her into nursing, instead. Moving up the nursing leadership ladder, her team player skills served her well, and she did end up doing a lot of coaching – in the breakroom and at the bedside, if not in the dugout or courtside.
When Chief Nursing Executive Debbie Marshburn announced her retirement at the end of 2024 after 42 years with Cape Fear Valley Health, Susan stepped up to her biggest coaching and leadership role yet. As the newest Chief Nursing Executive for the health system, she officially oversees a network of more than 1,500 nurses.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, Susan worked briefly at Duke University Hospital before returning home to what was then Highsmith-Rainey Memorial Hospital. She came to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in 1990, where she moved up through nursing leadership in the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit and then Surgical Services.
Eight years ago, she was promoted to her most recent position, Chief Nursing Officer for Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. That’s now held by Pat Blue, who was promoted from Corporate Critical Care Service Line Director.
“I’m excited,” Susan said. “I’ve been very fortunate to work with Debbie for a long time, so I think I’ve learned a lot from her. I’m very excited about what the future holds for Cape Fear Valley.”
Along with Marshburn, Susan has championed nursing education, especially with the health system’s assistance.
“Over the years, we’ve determined that it’s better for us to grow our own nurses,” Susan said. “That started with CRNAs years ago when I was in Surgical Services. We started partnering with CRNA schools, offering stipends, then when they graduated, they would come work for us. It was very successful. As education has become so much more important, we’ve realized that this is the way we’re going to be successful. We have a lot of nursing schools in the community, and we’ve been grateful to be able to partner with them and all the things we’re doing now to help nursing education.”
Thinking back to how the nursing profession has changed since she graduated, Susan said that while the scope of care hasn’t changed much, the technology in healthcare has.
“It’s much more innovative and technical,” Susan said. “There’s just so many more advantages now than we had then, so many things developed to assist us, whether it’s the LEAF Patient Monitoring System, which tells us when to turn patients to help prevent bedsores and other issues, or the computerized records in Epic.”
With the country still feeling the lingering impacts of the pandemic – which caused many nurses to leave the profession and highlighted the professional challenges many nurses face – educating and training more nurses is a top priority. Cape Fear Valley Health offers many incentives and assistance programs to employees who want nursing education.
“It has really ramped up in the last three years, and a lot of the credit for that goes to our Human Resources folks,” Susan said. “We reached out to our local schools and we’re offering much more assistance now than we’ve ever done before. So many people are taking advantage of all the programs that we’ve created to connect them to education.”
The health system also recently welcomed Jennifer Wells as the first Director of Nursing Education, a new position responsible for Nursing Core Orientation, Nurse Agency Orientation and growing the Nursing Residency Programs. Jennifer partners with Clinical Educators in the rollout of inpatient education and helping to standardize nursing education as the system grows.
Nursing Residency is one way for nurses to ease the transition from school to the bedside. That, combined with education partnerships and an extended Nursing Orientation program, is a flexible way to meet the individual needs of new nurses and the different ways each nurse learns.
Jennifer, who holds a doctorate, has a strong academic and clinical backgrounds. She’s worked at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke’s School of Nursing and was a former nurse in Cape Fear Valley Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
“Our ultimate goal is to train nurses well and to retain them,” Jennifer said. “We want to be a really good resource for our nurses and assist them with anything they might need. If they want to come back to the Sim Lab to practice skills, we’re here. If they say they want more education to keep current in their practice, I want them to feel comfortable seeking it out.”
Jennifer said research shows that the more educated a nurse is at the bedside, the better the patient’s outcome is.
To learn more about Cape Fear Valley’s nursing program, visit capefearvalley.com/careers/nursing.
