“If you can help others, do so.”
-Welles Crowther
All About Anthony
I come from a city called Johnstown, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh, PA. I learned about my calling pretty early in life. My goal has always been to help others. Even when I was a kid, I knew that I wanted to grow up to make a positive impact in the world around me.
I graduated with my BSN from Robert Morris University in 2012, and began working as a bedside nurse shortly after. My dream was to work as a trauma nurse, and I quickly transitioned to Allegheny General Hospital as an ICU nurse in the TSICU. From there, I expanded my clinical expertise as travel nurse for American Mobile, working in hospitals based in Pennsylvania and California.
In my travels, I realized that there was a way to marry my clinical experience with my love of technology. I became fascinated in artificial intelligence, and began brainstorming ways that it could be implemented in the hospital. I decided to pursue a graduate degree, and moved back to work in Pittsburgh as an outpatient liver transplant coordinator for the UPMC Starzl Transplant Institute. I also worked as a clinical liaison in the Pittsburgh market for Select Specialty Hospitals. This experience has allowed me to grow my communication skills, and learn more about the business end of how healthcare works.
Now I am back at UPMC, this time working as an Improvement Specialist for the Heart and Vascular Institute. I work on quality improvement projects within the service line. Some examples of my work include developing a new initiative for documenting and facilitating early ambulation for cardiac surgery patients, providing consultation on workflow efficiency for electrophysiology labs, and working with the registry team to provide high quality internal reports using Power BI.
Around November 2020, I became involved in Nurses Anonymous, a group started by some of my friends. I became an activist focusing on nursing self care, burnout/moral injury, and rights. It is a cause that I am extremely passionate about. I started off as a technical consultant, and participated in developing the logistics of the group. Eventually, I became a co-founder.
I graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in May of 2021 with my Master's in Health Informatics, and a concentration in Health Data Science. I focused my education in learning about predictive analytics, and how they could be used in healthcare applications. I created a theoretical system design for my capstone project that is a culmination of my education, clinical experience, and passion for creating change in healthcare through health information technology. My dream is to develop applications focused on mitigating clinical burnout by reducing documentation burden with machine learning, natural language processing, and predictive analytics.
