Tammy Gillham, RN, CCRN, TNCC, CDF
H4 – Trauma/SICU/CVICU
Tammy was nominated by Carol Brizzolara.
Tammy has been a registered nurse at UAMS for 37 years. She began her nursing career in the critical care unit, the former SICU, on the 2nd floor in the Central Building. Early on, she took on leadership roles in the SICU as a charge nurse, code team nurse, and nurse council member. She obtained her national certification, CCRN, in her 3rd year of nursing. She served as President of the Arkansas Chapter of American Association of Critical-Care Nurses for two terms and hosted all the meetings and events for the city of Little Rock. She also represented our Council at the National Teaching Institute in New Orleans. She has been chosen as Nurse of the Year at UAMS in the past and has also been chosen as MVP/Nurse of the Month many times over her career, as well.
Tammy has been part of the inception for many roles that continue to exist today. She was a founding developer of the CDF role, the RRT role, and Record and Code Blue Committees from 1990-2000. Hospital Administration tasked Tammy with the development of the Bed Liaison position (now ADON/RMO), and she acted in that role, while also serving as a CDF on E4. She has always done the scheduling for her units, and from 1995-2000 she did the actual payroll. Tammy, along with a colleague, was instrumental in developing 12 hour shifts at UAMS. She has been hands on in the development, building design, and stocking of the ICU units, along with the movement of patients when opening two units: E4 in 1997 and H4 in 2007. She spent many long hours moving the old MICU and SICU to E4, when UAMS went from 11 beds in MICU and 7 beds in the SICU to 30 total ICU beds. Tammy was also an instrumental part of the development of the Trauma Program at UAMS.
Directly quoting from her nomination – “There is not a shift I work with Tammy during which I don’t learn something new from her. Her perspective, training, expertise, and passion for nursing and UAMS are stellar. I cannot recommend her highly enough. She has had a profound impact on UAMS Nursing and deserves to be recognized for all she has done and continues to do here at UAMS.”