Melanie Chichester represents Christiana Care in national Magnet Nurse of the Year awards

A career-long thirst for new knowledge to improve care has earned Christiana Care’s nomination for the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s (ANCC) 2016 National Magnet Nurse of the Year award for Melanie Chichester, BSN, RNIII, RNC-OB, CPLC. If selected by ANCC, Chichester will be further recognized at the national Magnet conference in October as a global role model for clinical nurses representing the more than 400 Magnet-designated hospitals worldwide. Christiana Care is a twice-designated Magnet health system.

Chichester’s curriculum vitae mirrors Magnet’s emphasis for New Knowledge, Innovations and Improvements, the category for which she is nominated. A high-risk antepartum labor and delivery RN III, she has widely published and presented her own research on multicultural issues in perinatal loss and shares that knowledge locally in facilitating Christiana Care’s Loving Arms Support Group.

Chichester’s research recognizes that “understanding culture plays a major role in the way a woman perceives and prepares for her birthing experience,” wrote Elizabeth Igboechi, MSN, FNP, RNC-OB, NEA-BC, perinatal clinical operations director in Women and Children’s Services, in her nomination.

Chichester chairs several national and regional professional research-based organizations, is one of three nurses on Christiana Care’s Institutional Review Board, has served on several shared governance councils and is a research mentor to both nurses and physicians.

In her nomination of Chichester, Sharon Anderson, MS, BSN, RN, FACHE, chief population health officer, senior vice president of Quality & Patient Safety, wrote, “Melanie demonstrates how nurses deliver clinical knowledge and influence meticulous inquiry to create practice changes leading to improvements in safe, effective and value-based care.”