Nascentia Health’s MacDonald receives national nursing leadership award

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Nascentia Health announced that Andrea MacDonald, the organization’s clinical operations manager, was named the winner of the 2022 Joan Anne McHugh Award for Leadership in LTSS (long-term services and supports) Nursing. 

The award is given by LeadingAge, a national organization comprising more than 5,000 aging-services nonprofits. LeadingAge gives the award annually to one nurse leader in the United States who “creates a supportive and engaged workplace environment by displaying excellent leadership skills while managing nursing and frontline staff,” per a Nascentia Health news release. The organization will give the award in-person at LeadingAge’s Annual Meeting and EXPO, Oct. 16-19, in Denver, Colorado. Along with the award, MacDonald receives $1,000 toward leadership training of her choice.

MacDonald has more than 40 years of experience in the nursing field and has been with Nascentia Health for the past seven years. She oversees the organization’s licensed home care services agency, which provides certified home health aides to care for patients across Central New York. In that role, she manages more than 10 registered nurses and 120 home health aides. 

MacDonald leads Nascentia’s caregiver respite program that has impacted the lives of hundreds of seniors and their families by allowing caregivers to take a needed break for themselves and others by knowing that their loved one is in trusted hands. She also manages Nascentia’s in-house home health aide training program that teaches critical caregiving skills and prepares trainees to pass their home health aide certification exam. This paid program not only trains professional caregivers to work at Nascentia, but also trains aides for other nonprofit agencies and health-care providers.

MacDonald received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Hartwick College in Oneonta. She resides in Auburn.