Eric Rome Named Registered Nurse of the Year
At the recent Nightingale Awards, Eric Rome, RN, BSN, RCIS at Lane Cardiovascular Center was named Registered Nurse of the Year by the Louisiana Nurses Foundation.
The Nightingale Award is the "Academy Awards” of quality service, commitment and excellence for registered nurses in the state of Louisiana.
Rome has more than 10 years of nursing experience. He spent most of his early career as a critical care nurse in the Intensive Care Unit. In 2008 he transferred to the Cardiovascular Center and now works directly with interventional cardiologists during cardiac catheterizations and vascular procedures. Rome is the only person at Lane to hold the prestigious RCIS Invasive Cardiology Registry certification administered by Cardiovascular Credentialing International.
"Eric is an asset to our team,” says Laura Peel, Director of Cardiology. "He has a positive attitude and is a leader and mentor to employees throughout the facility. He values teamwork and professional development.”
Rome serves as the co-coordinator on the Chest Pain Accreditation committee and has been instrumental in establishing several life-saving "best practices,” such as the one-call pager system to reduce on-call call-out times and working with Emergency Room staff to create a by-pass process for patients with heart attack symptoms so EMS providers can transmit electrocardiograms from the field and perform necessary interventions prior to arrival, thereby by-passing the ER and admitting the patient directly to the Cath Lab.
Rome is member of the Society of Cardiovascular Invasive Professionals (SCIP) and is actively involved in organizational efforts to improve policies, procedures and nursing practices at Lane. He is an Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) instructor, serves on the hospital’s Safety Committee and is one of only 23 nurses in Lane’s Clinical Ladder Program for advanced continuing education.
Rome also volunteers his time to teach school-aged children how to recognize a heart attack and call 911, as well as teaching the community bystander CPR, early heart attack care and how to use an AED (automated external defibrillator).
