Jayme Wiggins’ Story

Jayme Wiggins applies three essential ingredients to her role as a nurse – change, challenge and collaboration – and started doing so at an early age.

As a second grader in rural Appalachia, she announced her intention to follow in her father’s footsteps as an automobile mechanic. Dad, however, suggested she find a career that wouldn’t require such intense physical labor in inclement environments. After much consideration, she decided on nursing so she could be “a mechanic for people.”

Jayme, who holds MSN, RN, NE-BC and EMT-B credentials, is Nurse Manager of the new UH Rainbow Center for Women & Children, which will open to patients on July 9. She thrives on change.

In her first job, she worked on a med/surg unit for just five months before convincing her employer to reassign her to the emergency department – well under the one-year experience requirement for new nurses. During the next eight years, she witnessed and attended to hundreds of challenging patients and conditions in the hospital’s Level 2 trauma center.

Her quest for more challenges led her to her next role where, as a critical care nurse in air and ground transport, she had to think fast while moving fast. There, she learned the value of collaboration to enhance patient care.

“It’s important to have conversations with folks who have more information than you and to respect their experience,” Jayme says. “You have to be open to others’ ideas. No one person is the entire team.”

As she moved into roles of nursing leadership, Jayme also discovered the importance of combining clinical processes with business disciplines such as finance. This willingness to embrace and drive change helped her transform several freestanding emergency departments into urgent care centers in a compressed timeframe. Jayme came to UH in 2016 and is currently working on a doctorate in business.

As she anticipates the opening of the new Rainbow Center, located in Cleveland’s MidTown neighborhood, Jayme expresses her excitement for yet another challenge that incorporates both change and collaboration.

“Our goal is to create a medical home with the feeling of home,” she says. “We’ve talked with our patients and tapped into our Community Advisory Board to find out and respond to what people need.” Examples at the new center include scheduling mom/baby appointments for the same day, establishing a dental clinic and offering Saturday hours.

“This is a great opportunity for our community and for UH,” Jayme says. “As a nurse, I feel better if I’m helping someone. It’s our turn to pay it forward.”