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Heather Mayberry was awarded Nurse of the Year by the Virginia Nurses Association (VNA) for her work with the COVID pandemic at Centra, Saturday, Dec. 5.

Mayberry collaborated with the Infection Control Teams and developed policies and procedures for how to care for not only patients but also front-line workers by developing the concept of a Variable Acuity Unit (VAU) to care for the ever-changing needs of COVID patients.

In her role as clinical nurse specialist for several units at Lynchburg General Hospital as well as the pulmonary hypertension clinical coordinator, she was part of a team that developed the hybrid Variable Acuity Unit. The VAU incorporates an intensive care unit, pulmonary care unit and medical surgical for COVID patients with specially trained nurses who can smoothly facilitate their evolving needs. Mayberry was instrumental in developing education and providing competency training for the front-line workers that provide care to this population.

“Many of us receive praise for being front-line nurses, but we stand confidently on the shoulders of our clinical nursing specialists and infection control teams. I have confidence going into this dangerous war with COVID and even on days when we are combatting our more familiar disease processes that both the patient and I can take comfort in the fact that we have leaders like Heather who have paved the way for us to take on this fight. She deserves the honor of the VNF Nurse Excellence Award because she has given us the honor of her ingenuity and hard work which gave us confidence and direction in time when there was none,” Tiffany Lyttle wrote in Heather’s nomination letter to the VNA.