Paula Simon has worked at Ochsner for nearly 20 years, guiding families through their most fragile moments, shaping the culture of one of the region’s busiest NICUs and mentoring the nurses who carry out some of the most delicate work in medicine.
Today, as the NICU unit director at Ochsner Baptist Hospital, she oversees a team that cares for thousands of Louisiana’s smallest patients each year. Simon found herself in this role because of personal experience. While in nursing school, she gave birth to triplets — Tyler, Dylan and Kylie — at 31-weeks-old.
The trio were discharged from the NICU at various times over their two-month stay and are now 23 years old, living in New Orleans. …