Caton Cadigan is the nurse that you want to take care of your mother. She is meticulous, detailed, caring, knowledgeable and the ultimate in patient advocacy. Every day that she comes to work, she gives 100 percent to the care of her patients and their families. She is the role model for new graduates entering our profession. Caton is the nurse that patients and families remember long after they leave the hospital.
Caring for patients is Caton's true passion. In a large ICU with multiple physician groups, Caton is successful in promoting positive collaborations as she coordinates care for complex patients with a multidisciplinary team. When physician barriers have been encountered due to a lack of knowledge of "nursing practice," Caton has taken on the challenge of educating and reminding them that nursing practice is not physician-driven. After receiving her CCRN, she conducted an evidence-based project on weaning readiness in the ventilated patient population as part of Baylor's ASPIRE program.
Caton is the chair of the house-wide Staff Nurse Advisory Council, which promotes national certification, evidence-based practice, healthy work environments and the forces of Magnetism. She championed the inception of her unit-based partnership council and worked with each discipline to ensure equal representation. The partnership council was such a success that Caton was recruited to consult on the development of partnership councils system-wide. Through her leadership talents, Caton was able to introduce healthy work environment concepts into everyday practice.
Caton lives and breathes "nursing professionalism." Patients have described her as kind, compassionate and a "blessing from heaven." Caton displays the attributes necessary for true clinical excellence and is well deserving of AACN recognition for her accomplishments and contributions to critical care.
