Good leadership is necessary for expert nursing practice to thrive and to assure every patient and family receives care that is highly personalized, excellent and safe. Margaret “Peggy” Doyle, MSN, RN, BWH’s director of Perioperative Services, exemplifies the best in perioperative nursing leadership. That is the view held by the national publication OR Manager Inc., which named Doyle OR Manager of the Year. Doyle received the award in November in Orlando.

In one of the many letters supporting Doyle’s nomination, Faulkner Hospital CNO Judy Hayes, MSN, RN, wrote about the care given to her family by OR nurses during their father’s surgery in February 2006. “The expertise of the staff was so apparent and the communication with family members so comforting. I wondered if I was receiving special care because I worked at the hospital, but as I saw nurses with the families of other patients, I realized that what my family was experiencing was the standard of care,” she said. “Peggy has created a care environment unlike any I have ever seen.”

Hayes added, “Peggy can make each person in a room full of patients and family members feel he or she is the only one who matters.”

In 1980, Doyle was hired to manage the Perioperative Area of the new Brigham and Women’s Hospital created by the merger of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Robert Breck Brigham Hospital and the Boston Hospital for Women. Now, as director of Perioperative Services at BWH, she oversees more than 40 operating rooms, a pre-admission testing center, a day surgery unit, a post-anesthesia recovery unit, eight nurse managers and 11 nurses in-charge. BWH’s Perioperative Services performs more than 30,000 procedures annually.

Despite an incredibly demanding and hectic schedule, Doyle never loses sight of BWH’s mission and maintains her commitment to improving care, ensuring safety and strengthening the already excellent perioperative nursing practice at BWH. “Peggy is always pushing the envelope to improve care,” Mairead Hickey, PhD, RN, FAHA, chief nursing officer and senior vice president of Patient Care Services, said. “Her commitment to developing the next generation of nurses is evident.”

Doyle created the newly licensed nurse (NLN) program in the OR, which provides top graduates from Boston-area nursing schools the opportunity to shadow and be mentored by OR nurses at BWH. As the organizer of Nursing Grand Rounds, she assures that ongoing education is available for BWH nurses. Doyle implemented the Crucial Conversations program in which nurses share techniques necessary for ensuring effective communication among caregivers and between caregivers and patients.

“Peggy has developed a loyal and dedicated management team through highly effective day-to-day leadership,” John Fernandez, vice president of Clinical Services, said. “She has done this by having structured and thoughtful retreats for the perioperative leadership staff, team-building exercises, implementing flow improvement projects and most importantly by zealously pursuing safe and good patient and family care.”

BWH’s safety program has been enhanced significantly by Doyle’s forward thinking successful initiatives. She developed Dynamic Scheduling, an advanced electronic scheduling and patient tracking system that integrates admissions, test center and surgery schedules, and provides a visual display of all cases in the OR at a given time. Since its implementation in 1995, 90 percent of patients now are admitted to the hospital on the day of their surgery.

Claire Fitzgerald-O’Shea, MS, RN, nurse manager of the OR, reflected on Doyle’s passion and commitment to patient care and nursing practice at BWH. “At a time in her career when she could sit back and review her accomplishments, Peg is still actively involved and a catalyst for nursing excellence,” she said.