Margaret Russell

Consultant/Culture Change Specialist

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​Margaret Russell, RN, BSN, MSN, Certified Life Coach and Mentor

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Margaret Russell has numerous years of experience in team leadership and the challenge of cultural change.  As Chief of Quality Safety and Value (QSV) service for a Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ms.  Russell successfully transformed the culture taking her facility from 1-star to 5-star facility (highest rating). Her passion for “Just culture” and “The Voice of the Employee” ensure that behavior change is sustainable through individual motivation as well as through strong and trustworthy leadership. Creating strong leaders who are compassionate yet demand excellence and moving culture from external accountability to one of ownership is Ms Russell’s strength in creating sustainable change. This leadership was demonstrated during a national pilot between the VHA and Johns Hopkins Medicine in a High Reliability Governance model involving organizational change. The central pilot outcome was increased sustainability through ownership for quality and patient safety among senior leadership.

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As Chief of the QSV service, Ms Russell has experienced first-hand the necessity to provide competent patient safety.  She has enhanced awareness of the impact of immobility in veterans, and understands the urgency to help facilities achieve and sustain their own culture transformation. Early and continuous mobility is a tangible patient safety intervention that impacts many areas of preventable patient harm, and can improve both quality outcomes, cost of care, and the patient and family experience. 

With over 20 years of nursing experience in critical care, long term care, hospice and nursing management, as well as business management,  Ms. Russell has a firm grasp of what it takes to set and achieve goals, and to consider the business case, and the personal as well as the clinical implications of change in small and large organizations alike. Ms. Russell has given numerous professional presentations regarding Quality and Patient Safety, Change Management, Just Culture and Sustaining Process Improvements. 

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Mentoring is Ms. Russell’s life-long mission.  In 2007,  she achieved an award as an advanced mentor within the VHA System, and in 2010 she became a certified Life Coach with the Fowler Wainwright Institute of Professional Coaching.  In 2013, received the YWCA annual award for Volunteer of the Year for mentoring, and is currently a faculty member at Saginaw Valley State University.  Ms Russell believes we are all more than our past and that setting future-focused goals are the keys to personal and professional success. 

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Ms. Russell’s passion for Early Mobility is in taking time to listen to the staff and their constraints, respecting the hard work they do every day, and respecting that their voice is so very important.  When we listen to the staff and they feel their opinions and concerns are heard, a culture of respect is nurtured where transformational change to a culture of mobility can be achieved.  

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