{"id":3496,"date":"2020-04-20T12:33:22","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T16:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:30","slug":"a-guardian-angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2020\/04\/a-guardian-angel\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guardian Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"
The president of Morristown Medical Center, Trish O\u2019Keefe, M.S.N. \u201994\/Ph.D. \u201914 is
\nknown for her compassion and dedication.<\/div><\/div>\n

It may be an exaggeration to say that nursing is in Trish O\u2019Keefe\u2019s DNA, but not much of one. Her mother, her aunts and her cousins were nurses. Her long career in nursing administration also has a family genesis: Her mother was a nursing home administrator. But O\u2019Keefe\u2019s rise to the presidency of Morristown Medical Center can also be attributed to her dedication, acumen and a generosity of spirit that earned her a reputation as the hospital\u2019s \u201cguardian angel.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Keefe, who worked as a nurse\u2019s aide as an undergraduate at Wilkes College in Pennsylvania (now Wilkes University), started as a bedside nurse on an orthopedic unit in Morristown Medical Center. She was drawn to nursing, she says, \u201cbecause I enjoyed caring\u00a0for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her responsibilities broadened, she discovered something else she enjoyed. \u201cl liked being part of advancing the nursing profession.\u201d As a supervisor on the orthopedic unit, she recognized a need to develop her administrative skills, so she applied to Seton Hall\u2019s College of Nursing, receiving an M.S.N. in 1994. Later in her career, she returned to get her doctorate, graduating in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was always driven,\u201d recalls Marie Foley, dean of the College of Nursing, who notes that it took great \u201cfortitude and persistence\u201d for O\u2019Keefe to complete her doctoral degree \u201cwhile working full-time in huge leadership roles at the hospital.\u201d Those roles included chief nursing officer and later, chief experience officer, overseeing patient care departments and services. Under her leadership, the hospital was designated an American Nurses Credentialing Center Magnet Hospital for Nursing Excellence four times \u2014 a testament to her dedication to the Seton Hall philosophy of \u201cservant leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

She sees herself as serving a community comprising patients and their families, as well as the hospital\u2019s staff and volunteers. When, for instance, it became clear two decades ago that patients in northern New Jersey didn\u2019t want to travel to New York City for cancer care, she focused on developing the hospital\u2019s Carol G. Simon Cancer Center. Recently, the medical center and its parent company, Atlantic Health, partnered with TGen, a national pipeline for clinical trials, so it could offer the same kind of cutting-edge trials available at New York\u2019s top medical institutions.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Keefe was named interim president in 2015, becoming president in 2016. Unusual for the time, she rose to the position from the ranks of nursing and patient care administration. \u201cBut times are changing,\u201d O\u2019Keefe says, noting another nurse-president in New Jersey, Mary Ellen Clyne \u201887\/M.S.N.\u201993\/Ph.D.\u201912, who heads up Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville and also received her Ph.D. from Seton Hall.<\/p>\n

Thanks to her nursing background, O\u2019Keefe is hands-on in a way that many in her position might not be. William Bruen Jr., a hospital trustee and volunteer, notes that \u201cshe\u2019s always willing to get up in front of a luncheon of volunteers or a group of doctors or nurses.\u201d That intimate sense of connection, Bruen says, \u201chas translated into extremely high patient satisfaction, especially with the quality of the nursing staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Keefe continues to integrate nurses more actively into the hospital\u2019s decision-making process. Allowing also help shape policy is part of the reason Morristown Medical Center was named both \u201cBest Hospital in New Jersey\u201d by U.S. News & World Report<\/i> and \u201cOne of the World\u2019s Best Hospitals\u201d by Newsweek<\/i> in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Keefe is also loyal to the university that helped shape her. She routinely facilitates clinical experiences at the medical center for Seton Hall\u2019s nursing students, and she was a member of the President\u2019s Advisory Committee. \u201cIf ever we call on Trish for assistance,\u201d says Foley, \u201cshe always gives willingly of her time.\u201d<\/p>\n

That generosity is emblematic of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s leadership and her ability to maintain, in Bruen\u2019s words, \u201cthe feeling of a community hospital in what\u2019s become a large,\u00a0sprawling medical center. To have a nurse running the hospital,\u201d he adds, \u201cgives the hospital heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leslie Garisto Pfaff<\/em> writes widely on medicine and health care.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president of Morristown Medical Center, Trish O\u2019Keefe, M.S.N. \u201994\/Ph.D. \u201914 is known for her compassion and dedication.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingA Guardian Angel<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4613,"featured_media":3446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,11,259,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2019-2022","category-alumni","category-articles-2020-2024","category-uncategorized","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3496"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3845,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3496\/revisions\/3845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}