Gallery of Excellence

Linda Burnes Bolton, DrPH, RN, FAAN

American Association of Nurse Executives (AONE)

2007 Lifetime Achievement Award

Burnes Bolton, who is vice president and chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles as well as the current president of the American Academy of Nursing, is a leader, educator, innovator, researcher, advocate, author and much more. That’s why AONE calls her “uniquely qualified” to receive this award, which honors an AONE member who has “demonstrated the qualities of leadership and service to the nursing profession by their professional and personal example.” To cite just a few of her many achievements over the years, Burnes Bolton is the founder of the recently renamed Geri and Richard Brawerman Nursing Institute at Cedars-Sinai, a past president of the National Black Nurses Association and has played an active leadership role in groundbreaking national nursing initiatives such as Transforming Care at the Bedside.

 

 

Phyllis Jenkins, RN, MA

New York University College of Nursing

16th Annual Estelle Osborne Award

A 1969 alumna of the college, Jenkins was honored for her “lifetime of outstanding contributions to international health and to the support of African Americans in nursing.” During the 1970s, she served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia. From 1980 to 1986, she taught and consulted in Swaziland and helped establish the Swaziland Nurses Association as it broke from the segregated South African Nurses Association. Jenkins is also a founding member of both the National Black Nurses Association and the New York Black Nurses Association. The Estelle Osborne Award is named in honor of the first black nursing faculty member to teach at NYU.

 

 

Grace Lopez, RN

2006 DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses

 

In August 2006, a distraught motorist in an SUV went on a devastating hit and run spree in San Francisco that left one person dead and 18 others injured. Lopez, an ER trauma nurse at San Francisco General Hospital for 25 years, and her team were honored for the outstanding care they provided in responding to this horrific emergency. “My profession at San Francisco General has turned into a vocation; a calling,” says Lopez, who came to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1981. “It gives extra meaning to serve as the City’s emergency response system.” For more information about the DAISY Awards, see www.daisyfoundation.org.

 

 

James Bowers, BSN, RN, CNOR

Top National Winner, RN Category

2006 Cherokee Inspired Comfort Awards

 

Cherokee Uniforms, a leading manufacturer of health care apparel, established the Cherokee Inspired Comfort Awards to recognize nurses and other health professionals who “demonstrate exceptional service, sacrifice and innovation.” That’s a perfect description of Bowers, who dedicates countless hours to volunteer work in addition to his duties as a full-time OR nurse at the West Virginia University Hospital. He performs many services in support of Camp Kno-Koma, a summer camp for children with diabetes, and devotes a week of his vacation time each year to volunteering as one of the cabin nurses. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bowers volunteered extensively in many capacities, including sacrificing another week of his vacation to work in a medical clinic housed in a church in Mississippi.

 

 

Kerry Jeanice, RN, EMT-P

National Prize Winner, RN Category

 

Jeanice, who works at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., near New Orleans, is another nurse who responded to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina with heroic volunteerism. Over a 15-day period, he was one of the key point nurses who coordinated the hospital’s efforts to vaccinate thousands of Louisiana residents against flood-borne diseases. Working closely with federal, state and local disaster assistance teams, Jeanice organized and ran vaccination clinics in tents on the street. In addition, he assisted 60 retirement home residents who were abandoned during the disaster, providing them with care, medication, food and water until other resources arrived.

 

 

Linda Lopez-Ochart Summers, DSN, CNS, FNP

Top National Winner, APN Category
2006 Cherokee Inspired Comfort Awards

Lopez-Ochart Summers has dedicated her career to serving the physical and mental health needs of medically underserved adolescents in southern New Mexico. She founded and directs four school-based clinics that enable teenagers in Dona Ana County—many of whom are uninsured or do not receive medical care on a regular basis—to receive integrated mental health and primary care at no cost. “Linda does not believe a bad teenager exists, only bad circumstances that can escalate out of their control,” says Elizabeth Kuchler, the nurse who nominated Lopez-Ochart Summers, her clinical mentor, for the award. Linda also publishes articles on adolescent health, serves on the faculty at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces and has an active behavioral therapy practice.