General Article
November 17, 2005
'Communication is the cornerstone'
Madeline Buelt draws on experience in nursing and leadership to build upon the SCCA's strong foundation
As the SCCA's first chief nurse executive, Madeline Buelt practices what she preaches by welcoming input and providing an environment for growth.
Photo by Todd McNaught |
As chief nurse executive and vice president of Operations for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA), Madeline Buelt juggles a host of overlapping budgetary, regulatory and operational responsibilities. However, nothing trumps her commitment to lending as much support as possible to SCCA staff.
"The most important thing I do is create an environment where professionals can minister to the sick in an atmosphere of trust and respect," Buelt said.
Caring for cancer patients is hard work, Buelt said, and the demands can drain people's physical and emotional reservoirs. "Every day staff have to pour a little more water out of their bucket," Buelt said. "My job is to keep the water bucket filled. I think of it as taking care of the staff so they can take care of the patients."
Buelt came to the SCCA in 2002, but her desire to "keep the bucket filled" flowed from her experience as an instructor in preoperative nursing at the Methodist College of Nursing and Allied Health in Omaha, Neb., 20 years ago. Over time, she began to worry about the environment that awaited her students when they left school and entered the work force.
"I think organizations sometimes take their staff for granted," she said. "They aren't allowed to perform within the scope of their profession and are restricted by management that doesn't ask for their input."
Determined to do what she could to change that, Buelt left her teaching position to become assistant director of the operating room at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the first rung in a ladder of leadership opportunities she has been climbing ever since.
At the SCCA, she is helping the organization lay a solid foundation for growth — just as she did when she helped the University of Nebraska build the Lied Transplant Center and the University of Utah build the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
"Madeline has a dynamic leadership style with a 'can-do' approach," said Dr. Marc Stewart, SCCA medical director. "She is a wonderful partner to the medical staff and we have learned a great deal from her."
Buelt enjoys being the first person to fill her particular role at the SCCA. "You get to set the stage for the way you think things should be," she said. Communication is the cornerstone, Buelt said. As chief nurse executive, she holds quarterly staff meetings where the agenda is wide open. "Staff members can ask me whatever they want and I'll give them an answer," she said. "It doesn't means always saying yes, but getting their input is important."
Embracing challenge
Cheryl Wyman, director of the Women's Center, said Buelt practices what she preaches every day. "Madeline believes that leadership and managerial success is built by having a strong team and she involves her team whenever it is appropriate," Wyman said. "She also shows a genuine interest in the needs, hopes and concerns of others. She pays attention and gets out there and even knows the names of staff members' pets!"
The most challenging part of her job, Buelt said, has been getting her arms around the SCCA's organizational structure, yet she also finds that the most stimulating. "Having three partners with impeccable reputations (the Hutchinson Center, University of Washington Medicine, and Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center) pursuing a common cause is exciting," she said. "This is the brightest group of people I've ever worked with."
A 'wealth of experience'
A native New Yorker, Buelt knew when she was 4 that she wanted to become a nurse. During a trip to the doctor, her mother sought to ease her fears by telling her that the nurse was merely going to take her temperature. Instead, the nurse gave her a shot. "My mother said the nurse must have made a mistake, which wasn't true, but I decided right then that I could do a better job than that nurse," Buelt said.
In high school, Buelt worked as a nurse's aide at a convalescent center. "I loved it," she said. "You felt like you were doing something valuable." Then came nursing school, where her emergency-room rotation in the gang-plagued Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn caused her to abandon her training. "I guess I was just too young to understand the violence," she said.
Still, the pull of nursing proved strong, and after moving to Nebraska with her husband, Buelt returned to school, completing her associate's degree and earning bachelor's and master's degrees — all three from the University of Nebraska — over a six-year period.
Besides her experience as an instructor at Methodist College, Buelt's early career included stints as a visiting nurse and a public health nurse. At the University of Nebraska, Buelt eventually rose to director of Patient Care and service line manager for Oncology. Buelt was the operating room director when doctors at the facility separated conjoined twins. Now 18 and doing fine, the two boys were 15 months old when the 28-hour procedure was performed. "It was the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my life," Buelt said. "In the end, it was like a book opened and we had two patients. It gave me chills."
Another memorable experience came after Buelt left Nebraska to become associate administrator for Clinical Services and chief nursing officer at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center. When Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, Buelt was responsible for all medical care for athletes in the Olympic Village, which was located on the University of Utah campus.
After 9/11, everyone feared terrorists would strike again at the Olympics. The prospect of an incident involving mass casualties "scared me to death," Buelt said. "I've seen some bad things in operating rooms, but what bothered me most was the thought that somebody might deliberately do something to hurt a lot of people."
Pivotal role
The continuing growth of the SCCA — it recently christened a new Women's Center and is constructing a 55,000-square-foot addition to its outpatient clinic on the Hutchinson Center campus — puts a premium on the wealth of experience Buelt brings to her job. Buelt leads the Expansion Project Committee and chairs the Clinical Services Team, an executive management group with broad decision-making responsibilities.
"Madeline's role is pivotal as we move to expand our clinical services into new areas such as early detection and prevention," Stewart said. "We have many operational and clinical challenges that require us to bring new technology to the SCCA — technology that has the capability to improve patient care, patient safety and maximize our service efficiency. Madeline is very prepared and able to meet those challenges."
