When Alena West, Director of Quality Improvement and Process Management, arrived in the United States from Europe, she already had a Masters degree focusing on history and the Czech language. With those credentials, it’s not surprising that she “contemplated going into teaching,” she recalls. But her career took a different direction.

Her roommate was working at a non-profit for people facing disabilities, which sparked her interest. That in turn brought her into a one-year program at Upper Cape Regional Technical School to become a Licensed Practical Nursing (LPN), including a clinical, hands-on component in 2009, at Liberty Commons and Broad Reach.

“I liked the facility very much,” she said, and so when she got her LPN license in September, she accepted an offer to join as a staff nurse.

LPNs handle many of the same responsibilities as Registered Nurses, RNs, though there are certain medical procedures they don’t take on, for example inserting intravenous lines. Alena wanted to expand her professional credentials, so found time to attend Cape Cod Community College while still working, achieving her RN license in 2011 and then a Bachelors degree in 2016. When the director of quality management at Broad Reach was retiring in 2017, her combination of experience and education made her a great choice to fill the position.

Even as an LPN, “I had always been involved in how the unit is run, I suppose it’s just my personality,” she says. “I acquired a little more experience which has been beneficial, to understand what the nurses at the bedside need and how they function.”

She remains an active hands-on presence, though now in an administrative capacity she sees her job as “making sure we’re following all the regulatory guidance. That means audits and constantly looking at important clinical performance indicators, for example if there have been any falls among our residents, emergency room transfers, always looking for ways to improve, making sure we’re following all of our policies as carefully as possible.”

Alena says that she likes her role very much, and sees herself in it for the long run. But that doesn’t preclude more quality improvement of a personal kind as well. With her Masters from Europe, LPN, RN, and Bachelor’s licenses and degrees from here, “now I’m contemplating looking into another Master’s,” she smiles.