Nursing is in the blood of Kenya Haney, MSN RN. She was raised by a nurse.
“I kind of always grew up with health care in my background and health care advocacy in the community, especially in St. Louis city, and its something that I’ve kind of always known I would grow up to do,” she said.
Haney is a cardiac service line manager for Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital and Progress West Health Care Center in St. Charles County, Mo. Previously she worked at SSM St. Joseph’s Health Care Center, managing orthopedics and medicine.
“My heart was always in cardiology. When I got out of nursing school, I worked in the ICU and the ER at Christian Hospital,” Haney said. “You either love cardiology or you hate it – and I happen to love it.”
When she was approached with a taking on a leadership position across multiple BJC HealthCare facilities, Haney said it was something she had to do for the community.
Haney’s responsibilities include running two cardiac catheter labs, a cardiopulmonary rehab area, respiratory therapy, invasive and non-invasive cardiology, and an anticoagulation clinic.
Haney said she loves cardiology because it touches everyone.
“I do not believe there is anyone out there who has not been affected by cardiology in some form, shape or fashion, whether it’s someone’s grandma who has high blood pressure, being able to save the life of a father of young children or just being able to help the grandma sustain her level of living and her quality of living with her heart,” she said.
Her love of “all things heart” is paralleled only by her love of advocating for health policy changes in the nursing profession.
“Health policy – that’s my true passion, especially when I look at minorities and underrepresented populations,” she said. “Having someone there in Jeff City or there in Washington, D.C. to advocate for our patients – that’s what I do best.”
Haney said nurses should be able to practice to the full extent of their training and licensure, which is restricted in some states, including Missouri. What is being pushed statewide by nurses is what Haney describes as barrier-free health care.
“It removes some of the restrictions that nurse practitioners have in order to practice at the fullest extent of their licensure,” Haney said. “There are several states that allow nurse practitioners to practice without the stringent oversight that we have here in Missouri.”
Haney said especially in the African-American community in North St. Louis City, there is often not a hospital readily available.
“You may have a nurse practitioner who is dying to have a practice for our patients, but are not able to do so because he or she may not be able to get a physician to have that particular oversight of her,” Haney described.
Haney works closely with the National Black Nurses Association and the Missouri Nurses Association, advocating to address access to health care disparities in urban and rural areas by allowing advanced nurse practitioners to help fill the void in preventive health and in primary care.
“Our nurse practitioners can diagnose, they can treat; they primarily work on preventative maintenance and health,” Haney said.
“If you are going in for a routine, adult physical or a well-woman exam, a nurse practitioner can do pretty much anything that your physician can do. But when it comes to very particular procedural things, surgeries and things of that nature, of course, your physician would have to do it.”
Haney said nurse practitioners can give broad care in close contact with physicians.
“If you’ve got patients who cannot get in to see a physician and they can get in to see a nurse practitioner, who can help them with diagnosis and treat them and give them their medications – especially with things like blood pressure issues that really affect the African-American community – it’s really a beautiful thing to be able to have that advocate there and that liaison to help our physicians,” she said.
Haney, a St. Louis native and Parkway West High School graduate, earned an associate’s degree in nursing at St. Louis Community College and a bachelor of science in nursing from University of Missouri – St. Louis. Haney recently completed a master of science in nursing and health systems management from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and was accepted into the University of Virginia’s doctorate of Nursing Practice program.
Haney has two children, Rico and Shayla Haney, and she is a member of St. Angela Merici Catholic Church in Florissant.
