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Q&A: Ochsner CNO Talks Career Strategy

 |  By Jennifer Thew RN  
   May 12, 2015

Dawn Pevey Mauk, who became CNO of Ochsner Medical Center at age 28, discusses how being open to opportunity and willing to be uncomfortable helped her rise to COO and system nursing chair by the time she was 35 years old.

I'd describe Dawn Pevey Mauk, MBA, BSN, RN, NEA-BC, as a nurse leader who is ahead of the curve and ahead of her time. She holds a leadership trifecta of chief nursing officer, chief operating officer, and system nursing chair at Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge, LA. What's impressive about this is that Pevey Mauk became CNO at age 28 and rounded out her resume with the rest of these accomplishments by the time she was 35 years old.

To put that in perspective, in its "2011 Nurse Executive Role Delineation Study," the American Nurses Credentialing Center reported that 85% of its nurse executive respondents were between the ages of 45 and 64 and only 1.7% were between the ages of 25 and 34.


Dawn Pevey Mauk,
MBA, BSN, RN, NEA-BC

Pevey Mauk recently spoke with me about her faster-than-average career trajectory, her experience as a young CNO, and her thoughts on developing future nurse leaders. The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.

HLM: What type of nursing did you go into right out of college? Did you always know you wanted to go into management?

Pevey Mauk: I went to work at the critical care unit at Charity Hospital in New Orleans straight out of school. I worked there from 2003 to the end of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came through New Orleans and the facility closed.

I thought [I was going to go the] CRNA route. In those two years, I had a mentor in the unit who was very open with me. He felt that I was made for management and that I would not enjoy CRNA school. [He said] I had the ability to be collaborative with people, but to be in charge when needed and to make decisions quickly. I was 15 months out of school when [I was] asked to serve in a charge nurse capacity so I was exposed to the management path very early in my career.

HLM: How did your career path lead you to become a CNO?

Pevey Mauk: Hurricane Katrina was in August of 2005. At that point Charity Hospital shut down, so I came to Baton Rouge. I worked as an agency nurse for four months, not knowing what the outcome of the Charity Hospital situation was going to be, and then was hired at Ochsner Baton Rouge (Summit Hospital at the time) as a staff nurse in the critical care unit.

After about a month of being a staff nurse here, the telemetry director asked if I would be charge nurse on the telemetry unit. I was a little apprehensive about that because I did not have telemetry experience. But it was where the organization needed me most, so I [became] charge nurse in the telemetry unit three months after coming on staff here.

A couple of months into that the telemetry director left, and I was asked to serve in a director capacity. I did that for about two years, and when Ochsner bought the facility they needed a chief nursing officer. The plan was for it be an interim role. I served as interim CNO from January 2008 to April 2008 when it became permanent.

HLM: How did you feel when you were asked to apply for the CNO position?

Pevey Mauk: I was a little apprehensive because being a CNO was not a goal I had set. It wasn't on my radar. I knew I had a lot to learn to be a CNO. I was one of the least clinically experienced leaders here and had been with the organization for the shortest amount of time. I was nervous about how my peers would receive that.

I did it for four months with the mindset of, "this is going to be a great experience, I will learn a lot, but I know I'm not ready for a CNO job." In April, the CEO came to me and said, "I've interviewed a number of people for the CNO role, and I believe you have the ability to do it."

I feel like he was extremely supportive and took a leap of faith. I know that a lot of people questioned the decision he was making—at the time I was 28 years old. But here we are.

HLM: What did you most need to learn during the interim?

Pevey Mauk: I had not been [in a role that] involved in strategic planning, budget development, the economic side of what we do, and had never been in a position to hire or fire anyone. I recognized that I had a lot to learn as a leader around managing people, setting a vision for the staff, and being fiscally responsible.

HLM: How did you go about learning those skills?

Pevey Mauk: I took the approach [that I just had to jump in]. I worked closely with the finance team and asked a lot of questions that I knew, to many, would be perceived as dumb questions or something I should know. But they were very supportive.

I took classes to try to help enhance that skill set. When I had the opportunity to sit with someone to teach me, I would take lots of notes and I would try to apply it to a situation I had been in before to [help it] make more sense for me. Along the way I recognized that I obviously needed to get a master's degree and believed getting an MBA would help fine tune some of that skill set. I completed my MBA in 2012.

HLM: How do your CNO peers react to you being as young as you are?

Pevey Mauk: When I [travel to] conferences, people are a little bit taken aback by that and then they begin to ask questions about the facility. Internally, I think there was a little apprehension initially, but now I have a great relationship with the CNOs across the health system.

It was actually the CNOs in our health system that suggested I serve in the chair capacity. People are positive about it now but they will still tell me, "When they named you the CNO, I questioned what was happening."

HLM: What's been your biggest challenge becoming a CNO?

Pevey Mauk: My background was in critical care and telemetry, so having responsibility for areas that I had really never been exposed to was a significant learning curve. Early on, I didn't have the benefit of past experiences to build upon, so I had to talk to people and do a lot of research. I had to spend a lot of time in the details to learn about the business.

HLM: What do you think your biggest asset was?

Pevey Mauk: The flip side of not having past experience to rely on was that I was able to think about things in a different way. When you have a learning curve, you learn to be more collaborative and work with people in a different way than when you have all the past experience and you just know the answer. I think it allowed the team to be a little bit more innovative and challenge each other to think differently.

HLM: Do you have any advice for your CNO peers about getting nurses interested in the administrative path?

Pevey Mauk: You have to look for leadership ability in people early on and understand that when nurses go to nursing school, not many of them go in saying, "I want to be a CNO." We have to help identify leadership traits that they have, work with them, serve as mentors, give people autonomy, and allow them to hone their leadership skills.

I think we have a lot of nurses who demonstrate leadership ability. They just need someone to work with them to help show them the way. Many times we wait and won't fill a position until we find the perfect candidate. I know in 2008 I wasn't the perfect candidate, but it's turned out to be successful for me and for the organization. We have to look at the abilities of people and what we can teach them, not what they come in the door knowing.

HLM: What advice do you have for nurses about becoming a CNO?

Pevey Mauk: I think people need to be open to opportunities that may not feel like [they are happening at] the perfect time. Also, find the area they're passionate about, get a mentor, and really challenge themselves to take assignments that are going to take them out of their comfort zone. I tell my leaders, and people who are interested in being in leadership, part of being in nursing leadership is learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Jennifer Thew, RN, is the senior nursing editor at HealthLeaders.

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