Qualities of Leadership: Jane Hartman

Nursing leadership shows up in many forms, and Cleveland Clinic nurses find countless avenues for pursuing meaningful careers while expanding knowledge and contributing to an ever-growing national community of care. In the series Quality of Leadership, nurses whose dedication has made a difference within and beyond the Cleveland Clinic health system talk about their career trajectories, explain what energizes them about their areas of specialty, and offer thoughts on what will be important to nursing in the future.

Clinical nurse specialist Jane Hartman, MSN, APRN, PNP-BC, has been a pediatric nurse for 40 years because she loves children. “Their tenacity, resilience and grit amaze me on a daily basis,” Hartman says. “I have worked in many care settings and have learned a great deal from each experience.”

Hartman interacts with clinical nurses caring for very sick children and offers guidance on a wide range of clinical issues. Her specific area of expertise and passion is pediatric vascular access, where the work includes providing comfort to children during painful procedures.

Hartman is committed to lifelong learning and is a professional problem-solver — themes that nursing leaders return to again and again as important to a meaningful career. She created the Pediatric Peripheral Vascular Access Algorithm, which directs nurses when starting IVs on pediatric patients, and she revised and validated a Pediatric Difficult IV access scoring tool.

“Through the use of the algorithm, Cleveland Clinic Children’s increased first-attempt success rates from 52% to 67.7%, with the odds of first attempt success increasing by 156%,” Hartman says.

A solution long in development finds its moment during COVID

She also invented the High-Line™ to address the problem of IV tubing dragging on the floor in pediatric units. “I had just received 25 handmade prototypes and was in the early stages of testing when COVID-19 arrived,” Hartman says. “We immediately recognized that this could be a solution for tubing snaking across floors in our ICUs as IV pumps were placed in the hall to preserve PPE and to decrease COVID-19 exposure.”

Cleveland Clinic has used more than 6,000 High-Lines since April 2020. Hospitals throughout the United States have requested and received samples to assist with these issues.

The future of nursing

The future of nursing is bright, Hartman believes, but stress and burnout will need to be addressed. “The pandemic is especially hard on our front-line caregivers, who have been thrust into unimaginable situations over long periods of time,” she says.

She also is concerned about a projected 80,000 baby boomer nurses retiring during this decade. “The impact of both of these phenomena occurring simultaneously is yet to be determined,” she says.