Alumni Profile: Paula Eicker, MSN ’11

One of the most rewarding parts of Paula Eicker’s job is seeing kids go from lying in a hospital bed to running and playing at summer camp. 

She’s the chief of nursing operations and vice president of patient care services at UPMC Children’s Hospital in Shadyside, where she has been in leadership for over 20 years and oversees a team of nurses and other healthcare professionals.  

Over the course of her career in healthcare she’s done work with different types of care, but she has always had a passion for transplant patients. 

“One of the things I think is so rewarding is, when you care for chronically ill kids, you see their life stages,” she said from her sixth-floor office overlooking Bloomfield. A child that was sick as a baby may one day show up at Camp Chihopi, a getaway for young transplant recipients, as a healthy teen. 

“It’s just so rewarding to watch that progression.” 

When she first started as a staff nurse in the general surgery floor in the late 1980s, some children would die waiting for transplants. She’s seen the field become robust enough that there haven’t been any deaths on their transplant list in years. 

“I’ve been doing this for 35 years,” she said. “There’s kids that I still keep in touch with that are having kids of their own, and that’s very rewarding to hear about.” 

Even before she was in the hospital’s administration building, she knew she had strength in what she called the “business end” of nursing: budgets, staffing, and working as a unit director. 

Attending Chatham came at a point in Paula’s career when she was looking to take her skills to the next level. She started working towards her master’s degree in 2009, and she said she enjoyed the time spent in class speaking with healthcare professionals with different specialties. 

“I think I really valued that in-class time a lot. There was such a diverse group of people in there,” she said.  

“I think that conversation, and seeing the viewpoints of other departments, is important to see.” 

She also liked that she was able to collect her diploma in less than two years, allowing her to advance more quickly than she would have been able to in a two-year graduate program. 

“I just didn’t want to drag it out that long,” Paula said. “I really wanted to get my Master’s degree and really have some focused study."  

Her studies at Chatham helped bolster her skills in evidence-based practices, studying medical literature from other hospital systems to determine best practices. That has helped her find out how to do things in ways that are more efficient, cost-effective, and produces better outcomes for patients. 

“That’s the main priority: good outcomes for patients.” 

Paula initially became interested in pediatric care after graduation from Duquesne University in 1986, where she worked in Children’s Hospital during her clinical rotations as an undergraduate. She admired the resilience of the young patients and learned through tearful conversations with families that not every outcome was going to be a happy one. 

Although there is an increasing awareness of organ donation through initiatives like Give Life Month, which is held during April and encourages people to become organ donors, and more availability of transplants through living donor programs, Paula noted that there is still a nationwide shortage of organs.  

That’s due to a variety of reasons, including personal or religious oppositions to organ donations and some states, like Pennsylvania, requiring residents to opt into becoming an organ donor rather than opting out. 

Paula said she encourages people to become organ donors if they can. 

“If I can help somebody else see their kids grow up or go to high school, that’s the greatest gift you can give,” she said. 

Mick Stinelli is a Writer and Digital Content Specialist at Chatham University. His writing has previously appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 90.5 WESA, and he has a B.A. in Broadcast Production and Media Management from Point Park University. Mick, a native of western Pennsylvania, spends his free time watching movies and playing music.