Shannon Crowell,

RN, PHN, MSN, MHA, CPHQ, C-ONQS

Advocacy and caring for people has been a commitment of mine starting at age 18 working as a certified nurse assistant and continues today after 25 years as a Registered Nurse (RN). After years at the bedside working on a busy medical acute infectious/end stage disease unit as a new graduate nurse and moving to cardiac care/telemetry and postpartum/newborn care, I pursued a leadership role in nursing to help push forth needed and necessary improvements in patient care prevention and management. As a leader, in a RN triage center and outpatient ambulatory (clinic) setting, I found that the position on the team where harm events were reviewed and processes for change were created happened in the quality department and I found my new path.

In 2017 I joined the Quality team. I became a certified quality professional (CPHQ) in 2019 overseeing contract performance for affiliated systems, ambulatory care services and  behavioral health. In 2021 I was excited to have an opportunity to return to a field I loved as the maternal child health quality RN and I obtained my nurse certification in obstetrics and neonatal quality and safety (C-ONQS) in 2022 and currently oversee quality and performance improvement for our inpatient Maternal Child Health program. 

My abdominal pain started at the age of 6. Ten years later, at age 16, I could not stand due to the pain radiating to my back.  An ultrasound was ordered, and the results showed I had a 6.5-pound tumor that had been growing for years. From the ultrasound, right to the hospital, to surgery to remove the tumor. The tumor  was wrapped around my ovaries so those were removed.  The surgeon left 1/8th of my left ovary for cardiac protection, not reproduction. At the age of 16 I was told; I would never be a mom. The story ends with delivering two healthy baby boys at the age of 31 and 33 with the 1/8th of an ovary that was left.

It would not be till years later that I would have to reconcile the fact that I was told to believe I could never get pregnant and mistakes occurred that harmed me emotionally and physically from the ages of 6 thru the age of 21 all because (1) a physician decided that causes of abdominal pain could be based on hunches versus actual diagnostic tests and (2) because a surgeon decided that the oophorectomy performed at age 16 sterilized me and I required no further examination or testing. For obvious reasons my first major in college was psychology, which I dropped to pursue nursing knowing that both were helping people yet I had a desire to effect change and I knew a nurse had greater access to the rooms (and the ears) to prevent errors like this from happening to anyone else.