The American Geriatric Society awards Valisa Saunders of Kaiser Permanente Hawaii the "Clinician of the Year" Award
On May 2, 2008, at the American Geriatric Society's Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington DC , Valisa Saunders, receives the AGS's "Clinician of the Year" award for her dedication and contributions in the advancement and quality of geriatric care.
Ms. Saunders has been practicing as a certified gerontological nurse practitioner in Kaiser Permanente Hawaii for the past 22 years. Through her efforts and hard work, she has contributed a great deal in improving the quality of elderly care in Hawaii . Her most influential contribution does not only affect her Kaiser Permanente patients but rather most of the elderly in Hawaii . The creation of the standard setting nursing home rounding program officially launched in 1991. The rounding concept started with Ms. Saunders in 1988 in a single nursing home. Now NPs and Physicians from various organizations do rounds to about 20 nursing homes caring for approximately 1000 elderly patients. The program has resulted in the decline of emergency department visits and hospitalizations of nursing home residents.
Ms. Saunders also helped Kaiser Permanente Hawaii launch the Medicare Risk contract clinical program in 1986 which included: screening for high risk elderly, a case management program, hospital discharge planning utilizing nurses for the first time, interdisciplinary geriatric assessment, a home health service, and nurse managed foot clinics. In addition to her contributions listed above, she continues as a clinician and has contributed to the development of geriatric primary care in the clinic, for homebound and Home Hospice patients and those in Alternate community LTC placements. Ms. Saunders is also recognized as an expert on State and Medicare regulatory issues for Advanced Practice Nurses.
She also acted as the Hawaii principle investigator for a Kaiser 6-Region "post-diagnosis, Dementia" research program, and managed an outside contract to provide neighbor island elderly geriatric assessment clinics for Native Hawaiians with geriatric nurse practitioners.
In her role, she has also worked tirelessly in developing the GNP specialty by blending leadership and clinical roles and applying them to her work with the University of Hawaii students. She has given over 100 talks to various nursing and gerontology groups in addition lectures and precepts at the University of Hawaii frequently. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Excellence in Clinical Practice Award which she received from the National Conference of Gerontological Nurse Practitioners in 2004.
Congratulations to Ms. Valisa Saunders for receiving the Clinician of the Year award and thank you for all your contributions to Kaiser Permanente and the advancement of gerontology practice.
