Her job is 'kind of like the CSI of the hospital'
The Children's Medical Center of Dayton

Profile: Hila Collins, Infectious Disease Nurse Clinician
By KEN MOSIER
For Health Care Today

Her job is somewhat like those that are seen on popular television shows. "It is kind of like CSI of the hospital in some ways," said Hila Collins, infections disease nurse clinician for The Children's Medical Center of Dayton. "There are some things that go on here and we have to put the pieces together — where did it come from? What do we think happened? There is a lot of investigation that goes on behind that."

She laughs when asked if she is able to wrap up the solution within 60 minutes. "More like 60 hours," she said.

One of her responsibilities is reporting communicable disease data to the county health department. "When you hear on the news that there were 2,345 cases of influenza, I was the person from this organization who reported those numbers," Collins said.

Collins says that she does some education for parents and patients and is involved in all the pandemic flu planning.

	Hila Collins confers with R.N. Kim Erker, right, on a ward at Children's Medical Center.

Every day is different for her. "If there is anything I can say is that my typical day is atypical," she said. "Whatever I have planned on any given day practically never happens.

"A typical day for me may be looking at all the positive test results that we have had in the hospital that day to see if there is anything that needs to be reported to the health department. Then we look at all the admissions for the day to see if there are any concerns with patients that I need to get addressed before the end of the day," she continued, adding that the variety is appealing to her. "That is why I say it is like CSI — a big adventure of what is today going to bring?"

She said, "I spend probably 30 to 40 percent of my time in different committee meetings and then, from there, it is phone calls that lead to three other phone calls."

Collins got her undergraduate degree in nursing from the University of Louisville. She and her husband moved to the Dayton area when he secured a position at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and she took her master's degree at Wright State University. She is currently back at WSU working on her pediatric nurse practitioner certification. "In all likelihood, I will be leaving this position. The reason I decided to do that was so I would be completely clinically focused. I would move into a position where I would work with the infectious disease physician that we have now and my time would be spent in patient care — whether that is outpatient visits or inpatient consults."