Big Gains for Tiny Patients: How Memorial Hermann nurses are working with first responders to improve outcomes for newborns in crisis

All things considered, it’s not a bad time to be a baby. The newborn mortality rate in the U.S. has plummeted from nearly 20 per 1,000 births in the 1960s to the current rate of less than four per 1,000, according to the March of Dimes. But the first month of life, when newborns are [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Healing After Heartbreak: A nurse who lost her grandmother as a result of a medical oversight made it her mission to keep patients safe. 

When Baylee McGrath was 12, her grandmother died as a result of a medical error — and it affected her profoundly. “It changed the trajectory of my life,” she says. “From that point on, I knew I wanted to go into nursing. I didn’t want anyone else’s family to go through what my family went [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

Staying the Course: How nurse navigators help patients on their journey through treatment

When Williadene Brown was diagnosed with cancer, she had plenty of questions. She just couldn’t think of the words to ask them. “It was like a numbness,” she recalls. “I couldn’t talk to my family. I could barely talk to my pastor. I just couldn’t talk. I remember sitting on the side of my bed, thinking, [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

After a Family Tragedy, a Nurse Found a New Calling in Transplant Care

Organ transplant recipients are close to Jessica Borden’s heart. Borden, a heart transplant coordinator at the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, was drawn to this specialty for a personal reason. Her younger brother, Jared, was fatally injured in a horseback riding accident a decade ago, when he was just 11. [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise

At 57, Rhonda Trotter, RN, is just starting her dream job at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital

It took Rhonda Trotter nearly four decades to achieve her dream of becoming a nurse. In 1983, when she graduated from high school, she was a single mother living with her parents and trying to chart a path to a successful career. She already knew she wanted to go into nursing: from childhood, she says, [Continue Reading]

Ali Vise