“The Perfect Example of an Unsung Hero”
Clinical Center's Clinical Recognition Award winners highlight innovation, compassion and hard work.
This Year’s Winners
Staff Clinicians of the Year
- Matthew Hsieh, MD (National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)
- Ning Miao, MD (CC Department of Perioperative Medicine)
- Michael A. Solomon, MD, MBA (CC Critical Care Medicine Department)
- Meryl Waldman, MD (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases)
Nurse Practitioner of the Year
- Laura Pinkney, FNP-C (CC Department of Perioperative Medicine)
Administrator of the Year
- Erin E. Dominick (CC Office of Financial Resource Management)
The Clinical Center selected six NIH staff for special honors in its 2024 Clinical Recognition Awards. Caregivers, researchers and a financial specialist all received nods for their outstanding contributions to the hospital.
The Clinical Center’s Clinical Recognition Program launched in 2018 and highlights outstanding staff clinicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and administrators at the hospital. One of four clinicians to receive this year’s award, Dr. Matthew Hsieh, a staff clinician with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics Branch, was recognized for his work on sickle cell disease with Clinical Center patients.
Dr. Hsieh’s team works on curative strategies for sickle cell disease, a genetic disease that affects red blood cells and causes debilitating complications and early death. Using medications, his research team was able to reverse the disease.
“Dr. Hsieh was incredible throughout the conduct of this trial, which spanned 10 years,” said his nominator, Dr. John Tisdale, chief of the Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics Branch within the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and director of the Intramural Sickle Cell Disease Program.
“His work led to the first FDA approval of a gene therapy approach for sickle cell disease in December of last year. This approval would simply not have been possible without Dr. Hsieh.” Dr. Ning Miao, an anesthesiologist with the Clinical Center’s Department of Perioperative Medicine (DPM), was praised for managing the most medically complex, resource-intensive surgical cases, many of which are deemed too high risk to be performed at outside academic medical centers.
She was also cited for serving as a role model to staff in her department and the anesthesia residents that she trains to manage surgical cases. “Dr. Ning Miao is distinguished in providing outstanding, effective and compassionate anesthesia care to NIH patients and their families,” Dr. Julia Labovsky, deputy chief of DPM, said in her nomination of Miao.
“[She] enlisted a team of anesthesiologists who work collaboratively on these complex cases in order to gain experience and expand this expertise within DPM.” “In this way, Dr. Miao’s contributions continue to benefit the patients of the Clinical Center for years to come.” Helping manage prescription costs led to recognition for Dr. Michael Solomon, a staff clinician and head of the Cardiovascular Section in the Clinical Center’s Critical Care Medicine Department (CCMD).
Solomon developed a Patient Assistance Program to assist with cost savings in the Clinical Center’s Pharmacy Department. The program reduced estimated medication costs by $2.4 million in the 2023 fiscal year and nearly $5 million since it was instituted in the latter part of 2021.
He also established a partnership with neighboring Suburban Hospital to ensure that Clinical Center patients requiring urgent access to care and/or procedures not available at the CC can receive those services in a safe and timely manner.
“He is an expert in managing complex patients in the ICU, a skill that is important to the successful management of many IRP patients who develop complications of their disease or therapy,” remarked his nominator, Dr. Parizad Torabi-Parizi¸ a tenure-track investigator and assistant chief of the Critical Care Medicine Department for Clinical Operations.
A focus on kidney research and treatment led to acknowledgement for Dr. Meryl Waldman, a staff clinician and chief of the Clinical Nephrology Service for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases’ (NIDDK) Kidney Disease Branch.
Leading a team of three clinical nephrologists, two nephrology nurse practitioners and two hemodialysis nurses, Waldman led the Clinical Center’s efforts to modernize methods of estimating glomerular filtration rate (GFR)—the metric that measures kidney function by the blood volume filtration rate per minute. In addition, she led a committee that implemented new race-free GFR estimating equations at NIH, a health equity priority.
“Dr. Waldman is a superb clinician who helps solve complex [kidney] problems arising in patients throughout the CC, while also advancing ground-breaking research in developing a new therapeutic approach for membranous nephropathy,” said Dr. Gregory Germino, deputy director of the NIDDK Office of the Director and acting chief for the Kidney Diseases Branch.
“She promotes quality patient care and safety and is widely recognized throughout the NIH community as a truly exceptional and collegial consultant.” Laura Pinkney, a nurse practitioner in the Clinical Center’s Department of Perioperative Medicine, was recognized as the Nurse Practitioner of the Year.
Pinkney evaluates or reviews nearly every patient that is scheduled for anesthesia in the Clinical Center, assessing each patient as part of a complex interrelated team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, family members and allied health professionals.
She provides outstanding, effective and compassionate care and on more than one occasion used her initiative and insight to identify critical aspects of care, such as personal or family bleeding history or unsuspected cardiac disease, that could have led to serious consequences if not discovered prior to surgical procedures.
“Laura has a strong investment in the care of these patients and will often take these tasks on herself, calling for outside records to stratify their preoperative risk,” Labovsky, the DPM chief, said. “She excels in multiple essential areas of leadership, patient safety and high-quality care and professionalism.” Erin E. Dominick, a supervisory management analyst in the Clinical Center’s Office of Financial Resource Management (OFRM), was selected as Administrator of the Year. Dominick isn’t afraid of poring over spreadsheets. The Clinical Center’s Nursing Department has about a dozen labor contracts, which accrue over $1 million in printed and electronic invoices each month. Dominick reviewed every timesheet for an entire year of contracts, entering details into a tracking spreadsheet she developed. This tool has been instrumental in bringing financial stability and clarity to the nursing contracts.
In addition, she and her team created a new dashboard to better track multi-year, multi-million-dollar projects, improving the system for monitoring new services, limiting manual data entries and reducing the potential for errors.
Her nominator, Juris Mohseni, a supervisory budget analyst in OFRM, noted, “Erin E. Dominick is the perfect example of an unsung hero. She is always working behind the scenes doing the research, preparing reports, reconciling numbers with all parties involved or simply being there to offer guidance or support. This year is no different, except the magnitude of tasks that she has lifted in addition to her normal duties has been more significant.”
“I have never met anyone more dedicated to the Clinical Center. It’s time to shine the light on this unsung hero,” Mohseni said.
—Donovan Kuehn