Author: Gabrielle Ward-Collier
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The Limits of Delegated Care
Seizure Safety, School Nursing, and the Gap Between Policy and Practice Michigan’s Seizure Safe Schools legislation is an important step forward. The legislation focuses on seizure recognition training, individualized seizure action plans, emergency medication administration, and legal protections for those responding to students with epilepsy. These are meaningful protections, and increasing seizure education in schools…
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Cerebral Palsy After Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy: How it Evolved
How It Emerged After Ophelia’s HIE diagnosis at birth, she was followed by numerous specialities and every therapy under the sun. Around the time she was just over a year old, our PT and OT began circling around the word Cerebral Palsy without saying it directly. We adored our therapists. Ophelia loved working with them.…
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What is Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy? A Caregiver-Focused Explanation
When you first hear the term hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, it usually isn’t in a calm or controlled setting. It’s often delivered quickly, during a crisis, and surrounded by unfamiliar language. Most parents hear the words before they have any framework to understand what they actually mean. This is a grounded explanation of what HIE is,…
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A Reflection on Resilience: Understanding Tulip Skin and the Journey to “Holland”
I recently finished Tulip Skin by Laura Sánchez, and it was exceptional. What resonated with me most was not just the resilience woven throughout the autobiography, but the way she wrote about motherhood, birth, and survival with such artesanal softness and brutal honesty. As she worked through the moments surrounding both of her children’s births, I found…
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What Happens After HIE: A Timeline of Diagnosis and Understanding
The Diagnosis Phase (HIE) Labor lasted three days, with constant decelerations that never fully resolved. By Monday morning, just before shift change, everything escalated and we were rushed into an emergency C-section. Due to complications, I was put under anesthesia. I woke up with no baby. My husband was not told where she was. We…
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When a Mother Isn’t Trusted: Parent Experience in the NICU
By that point in the NICU, my daughter was more stable, but we were in the part that lingers—the feeding, the waiting, the slow stretch before discharge. I had been changing her, holding her, and learning her cues. Not perfectly, but consistently. I wasn’t new to it anymore. One day, I was in the middle…
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Between Critical Care and Daily Life
I created something I wish existed when I was first navigating my daughter’s diagnosis. As a parent, I’ve lived through both ends of the NICU spectrum—including a severe HIE course and the uncertainty that follows when the hospital stay ends but the questions don’t. There’s so much clinical knowledge in those moments. But very little…
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In the Space Between Clouds and Stars
Originally Published in Imprint (National Student Nurses’ Association), January 2026 This piece reflects on the space between crisis and clarity, and what it means to navigate caregiving, uncertainty, and growth in that in-between. Read the full publication in Imprint About the Author Gabrielle Ward-Collier is a nursing student at the University of Michigan–Flint and founder…
The Neuro Care Bridge 