In July of 2020, Briana White (LEND 2013), transitioned to the position of Care Manager with Home Health Care Manager for Visiting Nurse and Hospice for New Hampshire and Vermont (VNH). Mid-pandemic and after seven years as a nurse at the ChaD Pediatric Clinic at Dartmouth Hitchcock, Briana looked inward and reflected upon her passion for nursing, personal strengths, and professional goals. She determined that she wanted to be closer to patient care in the community setting and identified a long-term goal of improving the quality of care on a system’s level. In her new role, Briana is creating care paths and recommendations for people receiving post-acute care in the home, largely Medicare patients. She is working to improve communication of siloed care teams by asking them to think critically and creatively about what patients need the most and guiding them to design an efficient, well-coordinated plan.
Briana has a love for learning and teaching. She is an adjunct nursing instructor at Colby Sawyer College and has also served as an adjunct clinical instructor at the University of New Hampshire. She was awarded the Johnson & Johnson Nurse Innovation Fellowship, a 2-year inaugural program that teaches nurses the skills to become entrepreneurs and innovators with a goal of changing the landscape of healthcare through education, mentorship, and leadership training. Briana is presently in the process of completing her fellowship project which is focused on creating a space for innovation in the home health care setting, by evaluating a rapid innovation delivery assessment through evaluation of key performance indicators. Specifically, she is looking to test the use of whiteboards, historically used in hospitals for care communication, in the home setting.
“Ideally technology is where I would like to go but recognizing the socio-economic status of most of our patients, we are going to pilot some magnetic, refrigerator care boards. There is science behind having agreed upon, well written smart goals that patients can work toward between visits.”
In addition to these educational and research pursuits, Briana recently launched Rurally Rooted, a Facebook page that highlights people and healthcare workers living and working in rural America. “These are real stories of the complex lives of families. My goal is to inspire and recruit healthcare providers and policymakers who think outside the box on how to provide care to patients and to better support families to navigate the system.
