Patricia DuCharme is a Registered Nurse and Board Certified Nurse Practitioner with extensive clinical and leadership experience in primary care and public health. She earned a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University and her Masters of Science in Nursing from Boston College.

Prior to joining RAD-AID, she managed medical departments for both Citibank and Revlon Corporations in New York and worked in the Regional Medical Offices of the U.S. Department of State in Hong Kong and Singapore. She has also been involved in the development of nursing education programs in Cambodia.

In her role as RAD-AID International Director for Nursing, Patricia is developing comprehensive goals for nursing with a focus on education, continuum of care, and administration in global health radiology.

Patty is an extraordinary leader, mentor, educator, and organizer. First, Patty has pioneered a whole new area for global health nursing outreach by empowering the role of nurses for medical imaging (including CT, ultrasound, MRI, mammography, nuclear medicine, interventional radiology and x-ray/radiography. By integrating nurses into RAD-AID’s multidisciplinary teams of physicians, technologists, physicists, and public health specialists, she has enabled nurses to take leading roles for health care safety and quality in low-resource settings of low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

For example, Patty created educational programs for teaching nurses to quickly and effectively respond to patients’ allergic reactions to intravenous contrast in CT examinations. This work on IV contrast training for nurses from Patty was particularly impactful in Guyana where RAD-AID collaborated with Philips to implement new CT scanners at Bartica and New Amsterdam Hospitals.

As another example, Patty instituted training programs for nurses to join interventional radiology (IR) teams for monitoring patient-safety, administer medications, and deliver follow-up care after IR procedures (such as angiographic exams and biopsies). Patty supported teams of nurses for IR teams in Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya as a few examples.

Patty innovated programs to teach patient care safety for radiology departments in low-resource regions such as ACLS and BLS courses for local health professionals. Her efforts in ACLS and BLS training were very impactful in Tanzania and Guyana.

Patty designed RAD-AID outreach programs to include nurse navigators who help patients to engage and follow-up through medical access points. Patty’s work in nurse navigations in LMICs has been particularly impactful in Guyana, Peru and Kenya where she personally worked to build these programs through on-site visits. Patty built a partnership with Breast Care for Nurses, an educational nonprofit based in South Africa, to improve training resources for nurses to support patients receiving breast cancer screening (mammography and ultrasound).

In 2020, Patty helped RAD-AID start the RAD-AID USA Women’s Health Initiative, for bringing mammography and breast cancer screening services to 10 regions across the USA where women of color experienced severe health care disparities.

Patty scaled the RAD-AID Nursing program to include resources for nurse midwives to use point of care ultrasound to detect and triage obstetric emergencies.

Patty has been instrumental in her support for longitudinal instruction of nurses to integrate global health into nursing contact credits for continuing education credentialing. Patty helped Deb and the leadership team at Nurses with Global Impact to start the annual International Nurses Day, hosted by the United Nations. Patty spearheaded RAD-AID’s partnership with the Association for Radiologic and Imaging Nursing (ARIN). Patty collaborated with the Virginia Nurses Association to obtain education credits for nurses attending annual RAD-AID Conferences.

– Deb

Patricia’s story:

In 2016, Patty encountered significant challenges when trying to integrate nurses into radiology outreach teams. Many volunteer medical imaging specialists were not accustomed to having nurses on the radiology outreach teams, so they were not in the habit of inviting nurses to participate in the global health teams.

Through numerous meetings and discussions internally and among partners, Patty discovered that this tendency was due to a bias among high-income country health professionals of having nurses, doctors, and technologists in separate professional silos that had predefined work roles in specialized medical services. Patty resolved that such a tendency toward over-specialized professional silos would be counterproductive in low-resource regions because under-resourced and understaffed hospitals needed interdisciplinary solutions with high levels of cross-specialization communication.

So, throughout 2018, Patty designed RAD-AID’s nursing efforts to be centered on radiology safety, patient-centered engagement, and health-service quality that integrated the views of nurses with other radiology and health professionals. The result of Patty’s initiative was an extraordinary acceleration of demand for nurses on our global radiology outreach teams.

Patty instilled a strong multidisciplinary culture of collaboration for communication and project planning that is still strengthening to this day. Patty’s tireless consistent delivery of outstanding global health outreach, education and clinical care stimulated a new way of building interdisciplinary teams so that physicians, nurses, technologists, physicists, and public health specialists work together to solve problems in low-resource regions.

Patricia DuCharme is a Registered Nurse and Board Certified Nurse Practitioner with extensive clinical and leadership experience in primary care and public health. She earned a Bachelors of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University and her Masters of Science in Nursing from Boston College.

Prior to joining RAD-AID, she managed medical departments for both Citibank and Revlon Corporations in New York and worked in the Regional Medical Offices of the U.S. Department of State in Hong Kong and Singapore. She has also been involved in the development of nursing education programs in Cambodia.

In her role as RAD-AID International Director for Nursing, Patricia is developing comprehensive goals for nursing with a focus on education, continuum of care, and administration in global health radiology.

Patty is an extraordinary leader, mentor, educator, and organizer. First, Patty has pioneered a whole new area for global health nursing outreach by empowering the role of nurses for medical imaging (including CT, ultrasound, MRI, mammography, nuclear medicine, interventional radiology and x-ray/radiography. By integrating nurses into RAD-AID’s multidisciplinary teams of physicians, technologists, physicists, and public health specialists, she has enabled nurses to take leading roles for health care safety and quality in low-resource settings of low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

For example, Patty created educational programs for teaching nurses to quickly and effectively respond to patients’ allergic reactions to intravenous contrast in CT examinations. This work on IV contrast training for nurses from Patty was particularly impactful in Guyana where RAD-AID collaborated with Philips to implement new CT scanners at Bartica and New Amsterdam Hospitals.

As another example, Patty instituted training programs for nurses to join interventional radiology (IR) teams for monitoring patient-safety, administer medications, and deliver follow-up care after IR procedures (such as angiographic exams and biopsies). Patty supported teams of nurses for IR teams in Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya as a few examples.

Patty innovated programs to teach patient care safety for radiology departments in low-resource regions such as ACLS and BLS courses for local health professionals. Her efforts in ACLS and BLS training were very impactful in Tanzania and Guyana.

Patty designed RAD-AID outreach programs to include nurse navigators who help patients to engage and follow-up through medical access points. Patty’s work in nurse navigations in LMICs has been particularly impactful in Guyana, Peru and Kenya where she personally worked to build these programs through on-site visits. Patty built a partnership with Breast Care for Nurses, an educational nonprofit based in South Africa, to improve training resources for nurses to support patients receiving breast cancer screening (mammography and ultrasound).

In 2020, Patty helped RAD-AID start the RAD-AID USA Women’s Health Initiative, for bringing mammography and breast cancer screening services to 10 regions across the USA where women of color experienced severe health care disparities.

Patty scaled the RAD-AID Nursing program to include resources for nurse midwives to use point of care ultrasound to detect and triage obstetric emergencies.

Patty has been instrumental in her support for longitudinal instruction of nurses to integrate global health into nursing contact credits for continuing education credentialing. Patty helped Deb and the leadership team at Nurses with Global Impact to start the annual International Nurses Day, hosted by the United Nations. Patty spearheaded RAD-AID’s partnership with the Association for Radiologic and Imaging Nursing (ARIN). Patty collaborated with the Virginia Nurses Association to obtain education credits for nurses attending annual RAD-AID Conferences.

– Deb

Patricia’s story:

In 2016, Patty encountered significant challenges when trying to integrate nurses into radiology outreach teams. Many volunteer medical imaging specialists were not accustomed to having nurses on the radiology outreach teams, so they were not in the habit of inviting nurses to participate in the global health teams.

Through numerous meetings and discussions internally and among partners, Patty discovered that this tendency was due to a bias among high-income country health professionals of having nurses, doctors, and technologists in separate professional silos that had predefined work roles in specialized medical services. Patty resolved that such a tendency toward over-specialized professional silos would be counterproductive in low-resource regions because under-resourced and understaffed hospitals needed interdisciplinary solutions with high levels of cross-specialization communication.

So, throughout 2018, Patty designed RAD-AID’s nursing efforts to be centered on radiology safety, patient-centered engagement, and health-service quality that integrated the views of nurses with other radiology and health professionals. The result of Patty’s initiative was an extraordinary acceleration of demand for nurses on our global radiology outreach teams.

Patty instilled a strong multidisciplinary culture of collaboration for communication and project planning that is still strengthening to this day. Patty’s tireless consistent delivery of outstanding global health outreach, education and clinical care stimulated a new way of building interdisciplinary teams so that physicians, nurses, technologists, physicists, and public health specialists work together to solve problems in low-resource regions.