The National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists announced that Ginger S. Pierson, PhD(c), RN, CCRN, CCNS, full-time faculty/instructor II at West Coast University in Orange County, Calif., has been elected to the 2017-2018 NACNS Board of Directors. Pierson has been a member of NACNS since 1999.
This is the third time Pierson has been elected to the NACNS Board of Directors. She has also served on the NACNS Strategic Planning Committee from 2013 to 2015 and was the chair of NACNS’s Cost and Outcomes Task Force from 2012 to 2015.
“I am honored to represent my clinical nurse specialist colleagues,” said Pierson. “I’m looking forward to contributing to the board and focusing on further advancing opportunities to utilize the CNS role and maximize service to our patients in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.”
Pierson is a Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist with an area of clinical focus in cardiovascular nursing, heart transplantation, and cardiac assist devices. She is a Theory and Clinical Instructor for pre-licensure BSN nursing students at six different hospital clinical sites, utilizing different electronic health records and instructor-led skills labs and case scenarios to further develop competency and critical thinking with medical, surgical and critical care patients.
“We’re so pleased to have Ginger back on the board for another term,” said NACNS Executive Director Melinda Mercer Ray, MSN. “Her knowledge and history with the association will be a tremendous asset as we pursue the necessary legislative, regulatory and educational paths to strengthen the CNS role.”
Pierson is a current member of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses and its Greater Long Beach Orange County Chapter and the California Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. She was recently selected to serve on the American Nurses Association’s Moral Resilience Professional Issues Advisory Council.
Pierson received the Dean’s Research Scholar Award for University of San Diego’s nursing PhD program in 2016, Jan Bingle CNS Leadership Scholarship Award from the Clinical Nurse Specialist Foundation in 2014, NACNS’s Preceptor of the Year in 2007 and the 3M Health Care Excellence in Clinical Practice Award from the American Association of Critical Care Nurses in 2006.
Pierson is currently earning her PhD at the University of San Diego and is expected to graduate later this year. Pierson earned her MSN from California State University, Long Beach and her BSN from Houston Baptist University in Texas.