(Aug. 25, 2023) – The Kansas Hospital Association's Health Care Worker of the Year Award highlights hospital employees who have made a significant contribution to the betterment of their hospital. These individuals are nominated for this award because they routinely go above and beyond the call of duty.
Debbie Webb has a wealth of experience at Wamego Health Center. As a registered nurse, Webb has touched nearly every department, helping grow the services in orthopedic and pain management.
Webb currently focuses her skills on the surgical department where she helps to train new nurses to be comfortable in surgery and perioperative services areas. In a Critical Access Hospital, there is a need to be an expert in many different aspects of care, and Webb is an exceptional leader in everything having to do with surgery, from preparatory work to patient recovery to sterile processing.
Webb is known for being a kind and compassionate caregiver, and she is very thorough when it comes to the details of her job. She has led the team to achieve patient satisfaction scores of 98 percent - excellent for the year! In fact, Wamego Health Center has gone 2,000 consecutive days without a serious safety event, and 450 days have passed since the last health care-acquired infection. They have not had a central line-associated bloodstream infection or catheter-associated urinary tract infection in more than three years. Webb's contribution is a large factor in this success.
While Webb has a great love for her job as a nurse, she also continues to be helpful in the community by helping out with the hospital's partnerships with Meals-on-Wheels and local food drives. Additionally, she was recently named the grand prize winner in the Manhattan Mercury's Nurses Week competition, which recognized the best nurses in the greater Manhattan area.
Webb will be recognized, along with other Health Care Worker of the Year nominees, during the KHA Awards Luncheon at the 2023 KHA Annual Convention, on Thursday, Sept. 7, at the Hyatt Regency Wichita/Century II Convention Center in Wichita.
--Shelby Stacy