Doris Amalu, BSN, RN
Staff Nurse, Medicine
NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem

Nurses throughout NYC Health + Hospitals are always under pressure to deliver quality care to many patients at once. Doris Amalu is one who stands out for her ability to overcome the obstacles and withstand the strain.

“She is often seen running around the hospital to make contact with patients,” says Harlem’s chief nursing officer. “She’s always ready to take on any task, even when it is given to her at the last minute. She is a driven and motivated nurse – the nurse we would all want if we weren’t feeling well.”

Amalu grew up in Nigeria and received her nursing training there before immigrating to New York in 2010. In her eight years with NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem, she has come to be known for her keen eye for lapses in patient care and her instinct for finding better approaches. She is admired for her ability to use – and teach peers to use – data tools, such as the population health and collaborative care dashboards to help identify patients who are not improving. Her goal is to reduce unnecessary hospitalizations by linking patients to primary care services, communicating updates to providers and working to help close referral loops that can cause gaps in care.Her use of data tools led to what she considers her proudest accomplishment: increasing the number of patients successfully treated in a hypertension clinic. “Our patients with controlled blood pressure went from 33 to 57 percent. We helped them avoid complications of uncontrolled hypertension and be healthy,” she says.

Learn more about our Nursing Excellence Award Winners