Celebrating Our People – Meet April Jennings

April Jennings, Director of Quality and Patient Safety for Saint Joseph Health, works with two teams. First, she leads a 10-person staff covering the main hospital, East and Jessamine. Second, she is  a member of a truck-pulling team based in Versailles, where she lives.

Truck-pulling is a hobby of hers. As a teenager, she worked in an auto parts store. 

“I used to tell my parents, I’m either going to fix cars or I’m going to fix people for a living,” Jennings said.

Though she has some basic mechanic skills, the latter ended up being her vocation.

Building A Career

She began her health care career in 2007 as a bedside nurse on the medical/surgical floor at Saint Joseph East.

“At that time, my priority was really sustaining my family,” said Jennings. “But then when I realized the depth and scope of nursing and how much I can achieve, that’s when I decided to continue my scholarship.”

She went on to get a bachelor’s degree in nursing, a master’s degree in leadership and a doctorate in nursing practice. She also has health care quality certification and holds a credential showing expertise in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations for hospitals.

Jennings left Saint Joseph for a year to work at a hemodialysis center. She returned in 2018 as a quality improvement coordinator for Saint Joseph East, moving up to manager and then, in 2022, to her current position.

Though brief, the work at the hemodialysis center gave her a better understanding of the ministry’s patients.

“Being within that population, I was able to see a lot of the challenges that many members of our community are dealing with day-to-day when trying to manage these chronic conditions, whether it’s transportation or housing or financial concerns,” she explained. “It really gives me additional drive to work with our leaders here and our community leaders to try to bridge those gaps.”

In her job, she balances requirements by CMS and the Joint Commission, and patient safety and outcomes.

“A lot of our work relies on our front-line caregivers — they’re at the bedside and they’re the eyes and ears of our ministry,” she said. “We rely on them to communicate to us their needs, their concerns, anything they feel like we can improve upon.”

Jennings pointed to Saint Joseph’s “just culture” as making that approach work. A former Daisy Award winner, Jennings acknowledged that she misses direct patient care.

“I love nothing more than being able to see a smile on someone’s face that I was able to put there,” she said.

But she feels she’s now in the right place at the right time. Her current work, she said, gives her an opportunity to make a greater impact, while her time as a floor nurse gave her insight into day-to-day caregiving.

“I understand the challenges, I understand the triumphs, I understand the way our clinical caregivers are prioritizing and what they’re thinking,” she said. “Having that ability to put myself in their shoes based on my own experience, I think, allows me to ask the questions and try to develop solutions that, applied in real time, will make the difference, either in the timeliness or the quality of care being given.”

Trucking On

Jennings’ quest for education continues. She is working on her master’s degree as a family nurse practitioner to strengthen her understanding of what’s being required of nurses, and their current challenges. It will also give her the flexibility to work as needed within ambulatory care settings.

That drive and her high leadership scores in the 2024 My Voice employee survey were among the reasons Jennings was named Saint Joseph East’s 2024 Leader of the Year.

Jennings believes Saint Joseph’s values start at home, like in the way she leads her department. “Being able to radiate those values down through my team hopefully allows them the strength and the ability through that servant leadership to also emanate those same qualities in all their interactions with anyone they come across,” she said.

Outside of work, the Floyd County native is the mother of a daughter, Hayle Hall, who recently returned from a Fulbright Scholarship in Taiwan. Her truck-pulling team, called Radical Motor Sports, runs a national series with its 4x4 pro-modified Chevy truck.

“It’s different enough that I’m totally able to unplug and refill my cup,” Jennings explained, “That’s where I have a lot of my fun. I get to wrench and play and work on the truck.”

There is a common thread running through her vocation and her hobby, she said.

“I believe in excellence in everything we do regardless of the situation or what it is,” she said. “The stakes are much higher on the health care side, but there is still such gratification in doing a job well done and helping others succeed. That’s where I get my passion and my enjoyment.”

Interested in making a difference and helping build healthier communities? Explore current career opportunities at CommonSpirit Health.