At the 2021 AL DÍA Top Nurses Forum & Awards virtual event, we will aim to shine a light on some of the notable nurses and healthcare professionals in the region.

After a month-long nomination period that saw AL DÍA receive a total of 64 nominations, the advisory board for the event sorted through all the nominations and selected 12 as honorees for this year's event.  

The honorees are split between four categories: academic practice, community practice, health systems practice and emerging leader.

In the days leading up to the May 26 event, AL DÍA will be releasing the names of the honorees by category. The honorees for the academic practice category can be found here. 

Here are the honorees for the AL DIA Top Nurses award in the category of health systems practice.

Clinical Nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital

Kelia Bernady is a clinical nurse at Pennsylvania Hospital. 

During her nearly 20-year career, Keila has worked in almost every area of nursing, including emergency medicine, psychiatrics, orthopedics, neurology, oncology, cardiology, surgery, home care and telemedicine. This gives her a bird’s eye view of how to expertly care for patients and how to prevent re-admissions.

She won a Daisy Award for coaching a novice nurse through a difficult situation with an artificial airway.

Clinical Nurse at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, emergency department 

Jennifer Gil has been working in the emergency department at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital since August 2019. Her work revolves around providing nursing care of patients with life-threatening illnesses, including acute and chronic multi-system emergencies, septic shock, trauma and COVID-19.

Prior to joining TJUH, Gil worked six years at Massachusetts General Hospital, as a charge nurse and later a registered nurse in critical care.  

In addition to her work, Gil is also a member of the Board of Directors for the American Nurses Association. 

She earned her bachelor’s degree in registered nursing from Villanova, and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Registered Nurse at Penn Medicine - Lancaster General Hospital

Isaias Maldonado works as a registered nurse at Penn Medicine - Lancaster General Hospital.

He has also worked at Lancaster Regional Medical Center as a clinical nurse associate. 

Maldonado has a bachelor of science in nursing from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

The 2021 AL DÍA Top Nurses Forum & Awards event will take place virtually on Wednesday, May 26, 2021 starting at 5:30 p.m. For registration information, click here.