ºÚÁÏÍø at Ashtabula alumnae Maraget "Peggy" Blood recently was honored at the American Society of Artifical Organs (ASAIO) Conference in Washington, D.C., with the VAD Coordinator Leadership Award. The 1981 nursing graduate was nominated by three different individuals to the award, which recognizes an individual for decades of work with a life-sustaining device for heart failure, being an expert in their field and being a leader among nurses, physicians, and surgeons.
From The Star Beacon |
WASHINGTON — Margaret S. (Peggy) Blood received the VAD Coordinator Leadership Award at the American Society of Artificial Organs (ASAIO) Conference in Washington, D.C.
Blood was nominated by three different individuals from three different states. The award nominees come from all over the world. Blood fit the award criteria of working decades with a life-sustaining device for heart failure (VAD), being an expert within her field and being a leader among with nurses, physicians and surgeons.
Blood has published, lead and spoken to many professional, national and international forums and mentors newer members to the field.
Blood received her associates degree in nursing from ºÚÁÏÍø at Ashtabula in 1981 and started her nursing career as a graduate nurse at Inn Conneaut in Conneaut.
Blood established the Margaret S Peterson Scholarship that is given to a Conneaut High School graduate who is in the ºÚÁÏÍø Ashtabula Branch Nursing Program.
She has also spent time at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Kingston Hospital in Kingston, New York, Straub Clinic and Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii and Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington D.C.
During this time Blood also received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the Georgetown University School of Nursing and in 1989 she went to University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing, where she received her masters degree in the specialty of cardiac nursing. In 2001, Peggy also graduated from UAB with a post-graduate degree as a nurse practitioner.
Since 1990, Blood has continued working at UAB in a variety of roles including cardiothoracic transplant coordinator, clinical nurse specialist of the Heart Transplant Intensive Care Unit, mechanical circulatory support device program coordinator, manager of the mechanical circulatory support device program and is currently manager of the VAD and ECMO Programs.