Her Story
About Olivia
Olivia Imbier serves as a clinical nurse specialist overseeing critical care and the cardiac cath lab at Trinity Health Livonia, a role she has held for about 18 months following an internship and her master's graduation in May. With 11 years in healthcare, she began as a certified nursing assistant at Trinity Health Oakland, progressed to ICU nursing roles at Trinity Health Ann Arbor and Oakland, and served as assistant nurse manager of an ICU before advancing to her current position. She earned a biology degree, a BSN through an accelerated program at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and a master's in science nursing specializing in adult gerontology clinical nurse specialist from the University of Detroit Mercy. Imbier maintains certifications as an acute care clinical nurse specialist through the Association of Critical Care Nurses and as a certified critical care nurse, and she belongs to the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists including its Michigan branch, the National Association of Critical Care Nurses, and the Michigan Adult Gerontological APP Society. Her work emphasizes patient safety, nursing professional development, and quality improvement, and she has received the DAISY Award in 2023 along with student scholarships from the Michigan Clinical Nurse Specialist Association and the Gerontological APP Society. She attributes her success to supportive mentors and attributes her professional growth to experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and creating an internship program that she presented on nationally.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Olivia
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to a lot of my mentors that I was lucky enough to have throughout the years. A lot of it is the right place and the right time that I got to work with a lot of really wonderful people, but on our hard days and hard nights that we had, had those support system not been there then I'm not sure I would have gone in the exact same path. I was really lucky to have a program director who really pushed me to do a lot of things I never thought was possible once I got into the program as well.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
The advice that I would give to young women is just keep putting yourself at the table. I think I had a lot of imposter syndrome in a lot of the roles. I started as an ICU nurse, and then when I became an assistant manager, like, I think it's important. I was lucky enough to have mentors that pushed me, but also, you deserve to be in those spaces, and you deserve to be in leadership. I think pursuing higher education is always something to consider and never be satisfied where you're at right now.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Post-pandemic nursing has really changed. We have nurses constantly dropping out of the profession. The burnout is very high. Violence against healthcare workers is very high. On the opportunities side, people are recognizing how important nursing is, and we're expanding roles in nursing. Technology has advanced so much more, and healthcare systems are starting to integrate AI in seeing how it can help nurses' workflow and keep patients safer. I'm really excited for the future of technology for learning purposes, and also just making nurses' workflow easier so they have more time to actually spend with the patient.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Some values that are important to me in my work and personal life, one would be integrity. Accountability, when you say you're gonna do something, you do it. Having a good work ethic, really working hard, taking on projects you think you might not have time for, or just you think you might not be prepared for, but being able to learn who to ask those questions to, and kind of getting where you need to go, no matter if you know the answer right off the bat or not.
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