Jennifer Chiu, MSN, RN, CNL Spotlight
May 9, 2023
Jennifer Chiu, MSN, RN, CNL, joined the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF with a level of enthusiasm and dedication that any healthcare institution would fight to have on their team.
“I’m excited to work here at UCSF. Everyone is extremely knowledgeable and smart, and I get to learn something new every day. Being born and raised in San Francisco, I know so many people who have worked at UCSF or have been touched by UCSF in one way or another. This institution has been in my own backyard and joining it to make a difference has been such an honor.”
Jennifer is the nurse supervisor for Interventional Radiology (IR) and neuro-IR at UCSF’s hospitals at Parnassus and at Mount Zion, taking up her position in September of 2022. As a leader, she considers her staff and her patients first. She describes her priorities as, “My main role is to make sure my staff are supported, and that patient care is always going the way it’s supposed to.”
Jennifer’s mother worked at San Francisco General Hospital for 35 years. “My mom is my role model. She introduced me to nursing. She impressed to me that nurses are basically the core of patient care and patient recovery. They usually hold all the answers you need.”
Intent on a career in medicine from early on, Jennifer attended UC Irvine, originally on a pre-med track. However, after her grandfather was diagnosed with ALS, the experience led Jennifer to decide on a path towards nursing with a focus on patient care. “I knew then that nursing was for me.”
Jennifer’s first nursing job was as an operating room nurse for a plastic surgery clinic. She then went on to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. While there, her manager floated her to Interventional Radiology as they were in need of a nurse. It was fortuitous, as Jennifer described, “I didn’t know what IR was. It is not a specialty that is introduced in nursing school. But there was the opportunity and I said, ‘Hey, why not?’ The experience I had already gained as an OR nurse in a sterile, highly procedural environment transferred well to my work in Interventional Radiology, and I soon realized that IR was a fascinating and growing field that I was proud to be involved with.”
Jennifer received her master’s degree in clinical nursing leadership from the University of San Francisco and has been with IR for 12 years. She knows this job fits her well, “IR is lifesaving. The technology is always innovative, and the atmosphere is collaborative. There’s enough adrenaline to keep you interested, and yet you are still able to develop a rapport with patients that you see over and over again. You get to know their family. You get to know who they are.”
Now a nurse supervisor, Jennifer ensures that proper patient screening is conducted, nurses are staffed to support all cases that come in, and that any problems or issues are resolved once they come up. In this, Jennifer works with the other nursing co-supervisors, Daphne Penaflor and Jeremy Montemayor. Together, they have built a management team based on supporting their staff and supporting their patients. As Jennifer says, “That attitude of service is our biggest strength as a management team.”
Currently, one of her priorities as a supervisor is standardizing the nursing workflow between UCSF locations in order to ensure that wherever a patient arrives they will experience the same quality of care. Jennifer has observed that IR nursing requires the knowledge to interface with a wide range of disciplines to make this smooth continuity happen. “In IR nursing, we must develop partnerships with oncology, PACU, anesthesia, and the operating room. We are all working together as a team for the patient, and we must adapt as a unit. In addition to the nurses taking care of patients, there are the IR technologists, the NPs, the fellows and the doctors, patient coordinators and management.”
Jennifer enjoys the challenge of this complexity as well as the constant technological advancements she sees within Interventional Radiology. “Here in IR, we’re often doing innovative procedures, and these procedures are so minimally invasive that the patient can leave the same day or the next day. The ability to use image guidance and being able to grant patients a faster recovery time is amazing.”
However, most fulfilling of all to Jennifer is the human touch that nursing can provide, and the personal relationships she is able to cultivate with the IR team and her patients.
Outside of work, Jennifer is a world traveler, having experienced 25 countries. Her favorite trip involved a visit to a friend residing in Nairobi, Kenya. There she slept in a tree house where she was awoken in the night by an elephant passing by directly under her bed. “That was the most amazing experience to see the wildlife, the people, and a different pace of life.” She also enjoys quality time with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. You can find them all hiking local Bay Area trails or trying out the newest restaurant.
