NEW YORK NURSE: February 2008
Five NYSNA members were elected in 2007 to serve new terms on the Board of Directors. Karen Ballard will serve two years as president-elect and will become president of NYSNA at the 2009 Convention. The four other board members, all of whom have served in leadership capacities before, will serve two-year terms and be eligible to run for another two-year term in 2009. In addition to those listed here, Winifred Kennedy was elected to a second two-year term on the board.
Ballard began her career as a staff nurse at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She later worked at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, served on the faculty at the City College School of Nursing, and was a pediatric-mental health clinical nurse specialist at New York Hospital Cornell University Medical Center.
Ballard joined the NYSNA staff in 1984 and served as director of the Practice and Governmental Affairs Program and later as director of Special Projects before her retirement from NYSNA in 2005.
Ballard currently is an adjunct professor at the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University and a guest lecturer at Molloy College. She also is a nurse consultant in private practice, specializing in professional practice issues and health policy, and chairs the Nurses Work Group for Health Care Without Harm.
Ballard’s widely acknowledged expertise in the laws and codes governing nursing practice in New York grew from her commitment to protecting both quality health care and the Nurse Practice Act. She has served on the National Council of Patient Information and Education and on the ANA Cabinet on Nursing Practice, Standards and Guidelines Development Committee, and Congress on Nursing Practice and Economics.
Doughty is a staff nurse in the operating room at Nyack Hospital in Rockland County. He left the food service industry in 1984 to embark on a career in nursing and to spend more time with his wife Catherine, who is also an RN. His drive to better understand his union, and the feeling that major membership decisions were being made by a small handful of active members, led Doughty to become more involved in his bargaining unit, and ultimately run for office.
Doughty was the recipient of NYSNA’s Delegate Assembly Award in 2000 for his leadership during the Nyack Hospital strike. He was elected to the NYSNA Nominating Committee in 2002 and served as director-at-large on the Board of Directors from 2003 to 2005. A Statewide Peer Assistance Network (SPAN) advocate, he was the recipient of the SPAN Award in 2006 and his service to NYSNA was acknowledged with his induction to the Leadership Institute in 2007. He is a delegate to the American Nurses Association House of Delegates, chairs the ANA’s Mary Ellen Patton Staff Nurse Leadership Award committee, and is former treasurer of the Congers Valley Volunteer Ambulance Corps.
Unable to stay retired, Gonzalez is a cultural educator for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York ASCEND (Acculturation and Support for Competence in Entry Nurse Development) program. The program is designed to support the entry of Hispanic BSN graduates into home care. She also has served as the spokesperson for the Visiting Nurses Association of America’s (VNAA) Hispanic media outreach and prevention campaign during Hispanic Heritage month.
Gonzalez graduated in 1958 from the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing and embarked upon a career spanning 44 years as an obstetrics conference nurse and nursing care coordinator at Bellevue Hospital. She was instrumental in organizing City nurses for collective bargaining representation in the 1950s and served as the bargaining unit chair at Bellevue Hospital Center for many years.
Gonzalez was president of the New York Counties Registered Nurses Association (District 13) from 1996 to 2000 and has chaired NYSNA’s Functional Practice Unit of Retired Nurses since 2003. She serves as the public relations committee chair for the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) and was the recipient of NAHN’s 2006 Henrietta Villaescusa Community Service Award.
Lopez is a nursing instructor at the Richmond University Medical Center School of Nursing, an adjunct professor of nursing at Adelphi University, and an educator with New York Methodist Hospital.
She began her career in health care as a nursing assistant at Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center on Staten Island, and earned her first nursing degree in 1995 from that facility’s school of nursing. She went on to earn her BSN in 2007 and a master’s degree in 2007 and worked as an assistant nurse manager before becoming an educator.
Recently, Lopez was one of only 16 nurses nationwide selected as an NCLEX-RN exam item writer for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
Lopez became involved in NYSNA in 2000, when she threw her efforts into helping the association win the election to represent the nurses at Saint Vincent’s. She then served on the negotiating team that secured their first contract. She participated in the NYSNA Leadership Fellows Program in 2003 and served her first term on the Board of Directors from 2004 to 2006. She currently serves on the NYSNA-PAC Board of Trustees.
A member of Sigma Theta Tau, Lopez serves on the board of directors of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses and on the advisory board for Advance for Nurses magazine.
Planillo is a clinical nurse in the adult intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan and is a member of the NYSNA Delegate Assembly.
He has worked at Presbyterian since 1989, where he has been the long-time vice-chairperson of his bargaining unit. He previously worked at Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan.
Planillo participated in the NYSNA Leadership Fellows Program in 2002 and is a member of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. He also serves on the NYSNA delegation to the ANA House of Delegates.