West Allis House Supervisor goes the extra mile to bring people together

07/26/18 01:05:pm

House supervisor Jennifer Greene, RN, helped Rogers–West Allis celebrate Christmas a little early this year.

With the addition of several new people to the team, Jennifer wanted to find a creative way to raise morale and help everyone get to know each other better. Inspiration struck when she came across an ugly Christmas sweater while online, and thought about the fun of dressing up and exchanging some comical gifts.

“To me, Christmas is about being together and creating memories so that is what I wanted to do,” Jennifer says. “Why wait until December when you can have Christmas in July?!”

She decided to put together a Christmas potluck for the night shift at Rogers–West Allis with activities like Elf on a Shelf, Secret Santa, and a costume contest, with participants winning prizes for finding the elf, giving the funniest gift, and most creative costume.

For anyone who has worked with Jennifer, this isn’t at all out of the ordinary. Team cohesion and acknowledgment are important to her, and she’s organized potlucks for other circumstances throughout the years, including transitioning to a new shift, a baby shower, and even her own goodbye party when she helped out in Kenosha for a few months while they looked to fill an open position.

“I like the idea of recognizing the people I work with and showing that they are valuable to the team,” she says.

Jennifer brings the same energy she does to leadership as she does to patient care. When she started college, she was set to major in elementary education or marketing, but her sister convinced her to get her CAN certification while in school and she found a new passion.

“Once I started working with patients and experienced how fulfilling it felt to help others, within a couple of months, I switched to nursing,” she says.

Her first experience with Rogers was in nursing school during her mental health rotation. She had to pick between a hospital around where she grew up and Rogers in West Allis. She had not heard of Rogers and decided to seek out a new experience.

“I was able to spend time with patients and talk to them about their experiences and the challenges they have been faced,” Jennifer says. “I wanted to be someone who could help others overcome their obstacles.”

Jennifer started as a pool nurse back in 2012 and actively sought out opportunities to work in as many departments and campuses as she could about the different levels of care. Over the last few years, she has made the transition to the house supervisor role in West Allis. Jennifer believes that it takes a special kind of person to join the nursing team at Rogers.

“You have to be the type of person who can show compassion and want to continue your education because psychiatric nursing is a special area of nursing,” she says. “If a patient is presenting for inpatient treatment it usually means they have already tried others modes that were not effective. They are coming to us for help because they feel broken and helpless.”

Getting to know Jennifer

Jennifer is someone always looking to expand her world. She has been to 36 states and her goal is to experience what all 50 have to offer. She has also been skydiving, which she described as an “amazing and peaceful” experience.

While she loves Christmas and was pleased with how happy the event made the West Allis night shift, she’s not yet sure if Christmas in July will return for next year.

“I also like the idea of coming up with other themed parties at different times of the year so we will see.”