Photo: Colleen Ingerto / Times Union

January/February 2017 edition of Women@Work magazine.

January/February 2017 edition of Women@Work magazine.

Women in health care: Meet Kitty Joy Thomas

Kitty Joy Thomas is patient care service director at Albany Medical Center, where she started in 1980 as a registered nurse. With the exception of some time spent as a nurse practitioner elsewhere, the bulk of her career has been at Albany Med; she returned to the hospital full time in 2004 as one of the nurse experts in obstetrics. After nursing school, she furthered her career with a master's degree to become a nurse practitioner, a post-graduate certificate in nursing leadership and a health care finance certificate. She credits a former boss, who mentored Thomas and named her as part of her succession plan, with helping her rise through the ranks.

Q: How did your mentor help you advance your career?

A: I met her probably 25 or 30 years ago. She had very definitely always encouraged all of us who worked with her to identify succession plans to be leaders vs. managers because there's a difference between managing and leading. That's what she did for not just myself but for a variety of us, and she challenged us. It wasn't an easy ride. It wasn't everybody gets a trophy. It was, 'You didn't do well with that, but what did you learn? What would you do differently next time?' Even to the point of practicing interviewing skills. ... In order to be credible, you have to know your stuff, and you have to communicate it, and she was really good at helping us learn those skills.

Women@Work

This story also appears in the January/February issue of Women@Work magazine.

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Q: What are the challenges facing women who want to rise to the top jobs in health care?

A: Nurses as leaders have to become more well-rounded. So in order to become a COO or a CFO as a nurse, or even a CEO, you really have to add to your skill set. Nurses are really smart women and men. ... Women have to understand how to work in a male world. We communicate differently I think that's huge and we have to be able to understand how they think, especially if you're in a male-dominated organization.

Women who are nurses, in particular, may step outside of nursing for their education or get an MBA or master's in health care administration. They may interface with hospital organizations across the state or the nation to network with a variety of groups of people and regions.

Q: Has the climate for nurses changed?

A: Health care is moving more toward team approaches, which is something that I spent time studying, as well as communication. I'm seeing that change tremendously, and have newfound respect for what we do know. I know many, many physician colleagues who will very, very clearly say, 'The nurses are the ones who are doing the work here,' which is great, and again, that's one of the most powerful questions for someone to say, 'What's going on? What do you think?'

Q: What do you tell new nurses?

A: When I talk to nurse residents, in particular, because they're newbies coming out of school, is that sense of no one can know everything anymore. We all need each other to call on as resources, so I might not be the best mathematician or I might not be the best person to plan this piece. Somebody else has that expertise, so you need to identify and use your resources.

The other thing that's exciting about being a nurse in particular is that there's so many different things that you can do. I didn't envision myself in this chair when I got out of nursing school. I was a clinician at the bedside. I was a nursing manager. I was a nurse practitioner. ... Then I became a nurse leader, whether that's a director or manager, and now I'm also looking at other professional development in the education field. There's lots of different things you can do, let alone the specialties, whether you're a surgical nurse or a pediatric nurse or a critical care nurse.

See the article here:

Women in health care: Meet Kitty Joy Thomas - Albany Times Union