St. Jude names Sarah Currie chief nursing executive and senior vice president

Newswise — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is proud to announce Sarah Currie, RNC, MSN, NEA-BC, has been named chief nursing executive and senior vice president after an extensive national search.

At St. Jude, Currie will lead the institution’s Magnet-recognized nursing program, the highest designation a hospital can receive related to nursing. Only nine percent of hospitals in the U.S. have achieved this recognition. At St. Jude, nursing includes clinical care and clinical research aimed at improving patient care and outcomes for children with catastrophic diseases. Currie will also oversee the institution’s Nurse Residency Program, an accredited Practice Transition Program that allows new nursing graduates to join the program before they are licensed and learn about the different patient care areas before deciding upon a specialty.

Currie joins St. Jude from Children’s Wisconsin, a pediatric acute care hospital in Milwaukee where she has served since 2019 as executive director of that hospital’s perinatal and neonatal service line, clinical nutrition and hospital staffing systems. She worked at Children’s Wisconsin for 21 years.

Last year, Currie was honored with the national March of Dimes Excellence in Leadership Award, which recognizes nursing executives for successful leadership balanced with meaningful and engaging care of staff, patients, families, and their community. 

“Sarah’s career has been dedicated to supporting vulnerable infants and their families at the bedside and advocating for them in the boardroom,” said Ellis Neufeld, M.D., Ph.D., clinical director and executive vice president of St. Jude. “We are glad to have her help to lead our patients’ care and accomplish our combined research and clinical missions.”

“I am immensely grateful for this leadership opportunity and very excited about the future of nursing at St. Jude,” said Currie. “I have a passion for finding innovative ways to elevate opportunities for nurses at all levels to grow in their careers. I look forward to leading and working with our nurses and advanced practice providers to maintain the highest level of excellence in nursing care for our patients.”

After completing her initial RN training at South East Kent School of Nursing in Ashford, England, and her BSN at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Currie obtained a Master of Science in Nursing at the University of Phoenix, Southern California.

Currie replaces Chief Nursing Executive Robin Mutz, MPPM, BSN, RNC, NEA-BC, who retired at the end of June following five years of service at St. Jude. During her tenure, Mutz oversaw the development of St. Jude Home Care, LLC, a home care agency to help extend care beyond the hospital’s walls, and contributed to designing a new state-of-the-art outpatient clinical building now under construction.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer, sickle cell disease, and other life-threatening disorders. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 60 years ago. St. Jude shares the breakthroughs it makes to help doctors and researchers at local hospitals and cancer centers around the world improve the quality of treatment and care for even more children. To learn more, visit stjude.org, read the St. Jude Progress blog, and follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.