Alumni Spotlight

Meet Patti Gardner, MSN, CNM, IBLC, CNE

• 1992 / BSN

• 1994 / MS Nurse Educator

• 2007 / Post-Master’s Certificate,
  Adult Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner

The Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing is proud to spotlight Patti Gardner for all of her excellent achievements. After graduating from our school's BSN and MS Nurse Educator programs, she graduated from the University of Colorado Health Science Center’s Nurse Midwifery graduate program, then recently returned to our school to complete the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner post-master’s certificate program.  Gardner was recently the Clinical Nurse Specialist at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC) for high risk ante-partum, postpartum and labor and delivery patients. She is now an advanced practice psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner on the CRMC Behavioral Health Unit, specializing in perinatal psychiatry and caring for both inpatient and outpatient clients. She spent the last year driving weekly to the Kempe Center of the Children’s Hospital of Denver for intensive training under the supervision of Dr. Brian Stafford, Medical Director at the Center’s Postpartum Depression Intervention Program and also learned how to care for the depressed infant. She is planning to implement a similar program for postpartum depression at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in the future. Gardner states that there are no programs for postpartum depression currently in Wyoming.

Gardner was one of only twenty nurses chosen from international applicants for the Johnson and Johnson/Sigma Theta Tau Maternal Child Health Leadership Academy. Her eighteen month long project for the leadership Academy used the transformation style of leadership to lead the CRMC labor and delivery nurses to use intermittent fetal heart rate monitoring. A secondary goal was to empower the labor and delivery nurses to utilize evidence based nursing practice. She presented her research at the Biennial Convention in Baltimore, Maryland in November 2007 along with her mentor, Dr. Mary Beth Stepans.

She is serving as mentor to Todd Berger, CNS for Critical Care Services at CRMC in Sigma Theta Tau’s Chiron Mentorship Program, a year-long program for which they were recently selected. Adding to these many activities, she also has published multiple articles in professional nursing journals, presented a poster presentation in 2006 at the Western Institute of Nursing conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as well as the 2007 Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Conference in Florida. She is currently serving as President for the Alpha Pi Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau.