Title: Director of Nursing
Company: AdventHealth Lake Wales
Location: Kissimmee, Florida, United States
LaTosha D. Phillips, MSN, RN, director of nursing at AdventHealth Lake Wales, has been recognized by Marquis Who’s Who Top Nurses for dedication, achievements, and leadership in health care.
With two and a half decades of experience, Ms. Phillips has built a successful career in health care, specializing in emergency services, leadership, and patient safety. She has excelled as director of inpatient nursing at AdventHealth Lake Wales since 2023 and as director of nursing since 2022. In these roles, she oversees three managers and an interim manager, with a reporting structure encompassing approximately 200 full-time equivalents. She starts each hospital day by leading administrative safety huddles and manages an eight-bed ICU, a 31-bed cardiac telemetry unit, and a 42-bed med-surg unit. Her responsibilities include collaborating with hospitalists and critical care doctors, managing teleservices, ensuring cohesiveness throughout the hospital, working closely with the ED and CNO on quality measures and staffing, and engaging in coaching, mentoring, and corrective actions.
Ms. Phillips’ experience includes serving as an interim chief nursing officer at AdventHealth, West FL, since 2024. She was director of emergency services, senior adult mental health, and house supervision at AdventHealth Lake Wales from 2022 to 2023 and director of emergency services at the same facility from 2020 to 2022. Her previous roles include trauma program manager and director of emergency services at Turkey Creek Medical Center, nursing staff development practitioner and clinical educator at Tennova Healthcare, nursing staff development specialist at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, and various positions at Covenant Health, Blount Memorial Hospital, University of Tennessee Medical Center, Physician’s Regional Medical Center, Baptist Hospital, and Shabonna Health Care. She has also been involved with advisory boards for Roane State Community College, Pellissippi Community College, and South Florida State College.
She has also served as a keynote speaker at the leadership seminar “Generational Differences Versus Professional Will Driver, We’re More Alike Than You’d Like to Admit” at Turkey Creek Medical Center in 2017 and spoke at the School Nurse Conference on “What Spreads Faster Than Ebola,” sponsored by East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. She holds memberships with the Tennessee Organization of Nurse Leaders, the Association for Nursing Professional Development, and Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. She dedicates her time to advisory boards for community colleges, including Roane State Community College for the Paramedic Program, Pellissippi Community College for the Nursing Program, and South Florida State College for the Fire/Paramedic Program. In light of her impressive undertakings, she was honored with the Clinical Excellence Award in 2018. She built a solid educational foundation by earning her registered nurse designation and associate degree in nursing from Walters State Community College in 2004, a Bachelor of Science in nursing from The University of Tennessee in 2013, and a Master of Science in nursing education from King University in 2017. Her certifications include basic life support since 1999, advanced cardiac life support, and pediatric advanced life support since 2005, and she was a certified pediatric nurse from 2015 to 2019. Additionally, she was a non-violent crisis intervention instructor from 2015 to 2023.
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