 |
 |
 |
Kathryn Blackman of Jonesboro has been named vice president of patient clinical services at St. Bernards Medical Center.
She will have oversight of St. Bernards emergency department, trauma center, research center, institutional review board, epidemiology, the community training center and clinical, community and corporate education. She also will oversee inpatient dialysis, the Outpatient Dialysis Center in Jonesboro, the Outpatient Dialysis Center in Wynne and nursing at the St. Bernards Behavioral Health Unit.
A nurse by training, Blackman has been on staff at St. Bernards since 1979. She holds associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Arkansas State University. Chair of the St. Bernards Medical Center ethics standards committee, she is the regional leader for the Northeast Arkansas Healthcare Emergency Preparedness Committee and co-chair of the Arkansas Hospitals Standards Committee for the Arkansas Department of Health and Arkansas Hospital Association.
She joined the staff at St. Bernards as a registered nurse in the cardiac unit and has worked as manager of that unit as well as inpatient and outpatient oncology and as assistant director of nursing. In 1989 she was named director of critical care, adding responsibility for the emergency department in 1999. Five years later, she was named an assistant vice president. As an AVP her responsibilities included nursing, education, epidemiology, emergency department, dialysis and behavioral health.
Blackman began her nursing career at Harris Hospital in Newport.
She holds certifications in healthcare ethics and as a critical care clinical nurse specialist and critical care registered nurse. Her professional memberships include the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, the Arkansas State Nurses Association and Sigma Theta Tau International.
Blackman is an advisory board member for the Workforce Training Consortium of Northeast Arkansas and the ASU Technical Institute. She also is a hospice advisory board member and a member of the St. Bernards Development Foundation’s Women’s Advisory Council. She serves on the Local Emergency Planning Committee and is both an American Red Cross and a United Way volunteer.
She has three children, Jillian Thayer who is an attorney in the Bureau of Legislative Research in Little Rock, James Blackman Dent who is serving a post-doctoral fellowship in theoretical physics at Arizona State University in Phoenix and Lark Little who will graduate from ASU in May with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She also has four grandchildren.
Her mother is Jean Blackman of Jonesboro.
St. Bernards is a 438-bed acute care medical center that has served as the region’s trusted provider of comprehensive, compassionate healthcare since it was founded in 1900. With dedicated and experienced employees, advanced technology and the region’s largest medical staff, the not-for-profit medical center delivers true community healthcare while focusing on quality, safety, cost control, service and diversity.