August 25, 2026
Educating Nurses: Dr. Anna Fisk, 2026 Children’s HeartLink Founders Award Winner
Years after she began volunteering with Children’s HeartLink, Dr. Anna Fisk watched as a nurse stood before his colleagues, leading a new initiative focused on improving the quality of care for children with heart disease. She remembers the nurse, Unnikrishnan – called Unni for short – as being young and eager to learn when she first met him at his hospital in India. Now he is a leader, mentoring the next generation and improving care for children with congenital heart disease around the world.
For Dr. Fisk, witnessing transformations like this is why she keeps coming back.
Anna Fisk, PhD, RN, CCRN, has been named as the recipient of the 2026 Children’s HeartLink Founders Award, recognizing her years of advancing the practice of pediatric cardiac nursing through education and mentorship.
The Founders Award honors Children’s HeartLink contributors whose legacies reach beyond their own accomplishments to build sustainable growth for excellence in caring for children with congenital heart disease globally.
Her Calling: The nurse she was meant to be
Like many of the children she would grow up to care for, Dr. Fisk was born with congenital heart disease (CHD) and required surgery on her heart when she was eight years old. She explained, if she had been born today in the United States, that particular surgery would have been done when she was an infant, illustrating how much the practice of pediatric heart care has changed over the years.
She knew she wanted to be a nurse from a young age and remembers being a nursing student, standing outside the doors of the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and thinking, “Oh, this is where I want to be.”
Over the years, Dr. Fisk progressed from a new nurse to a nursing leader, training people new to the profession.
Growing the Next Generation of Pediatric Cardiac Nurses
A photo from the early years of partnership at PGIMER, as Dr. Fisk leads a discussion at a child’s bedside.
Dr. Fisk sees her role as an educator as helping promote people to be the best they can be. She teaches new nurses how to think critically and look for evidence. How to always put children and their parents first.
“This is something I’ve done my whole career,” she said. “I love it!”
Her impact as a medical volunteer at Children’s HeartLink goes beyond her role on the training team at PGIMER. As she helped nurses grow into leaders, opportunities to strengthen pediatric cardiac nursing expanded as well. At Boston Children’s Hospital, Dr. Fisk has mentored nurses to become educators themselves, including Erin Babine, who now volunteers with Children’s HeartLink, continuing the ripple effect in global nursing education.
Dr. Fisk’s work at PGIMER also led to a broader role in expanding nursing education through the Pediatric Cardiac Society of India (PCSI) Nursing Scientific Committee.
“She has been a respected mentor to hundreds of nurses in India,” said Veera Rajasekhar, in-country India consultant for Children’s HeartLink. “Beyond serving as a mentor, she is a strong advocate for nurses.”
Dr. Fisk’s influence helps shape the nursing program for the organization’s annual conference, where nurses from pediatric cardiac centers across India gather to learn from one another, evaluate best practices, and strengthen a growing professional community.
Dr. Fisk’s commitment to helping nurses improve has also made her a key contributor to the International Quality Improvement Collaborative (IQIC) for Congenital Heart Disease, through which she coaches hospitals across multiple countries on quality improvement projects and virtual education initiatives. She currently chairs the newly formed IQIC Nursing Steering Committee with members from across the globe including Children’s HeartLink partner hospitals.
Through all her work with Children’s HeartLink, Dr. Fisk’s approach shows common themes: investing in nurses, helping them grow and trusting them to multiply that knowledge to better serve children with CHD and their families.
Pictured: Dr. Fisk (fourth from right) with participants at the PCSI Nursing Session as they celebrated their 10th year together. Nurse Christy Babuji is pictured next to Fisk (third from right).
Commitment Through Partnership Shapes Future Leaders
Dr. Fisk is the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) clinical coordinator and nurse scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital. She has volunteered with Children’s HeartLink since 2011, participating in every training visit at partner hospital Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh, India, where she has mentored many nurses like Unni and watched their expertise grow. The hospital in northwestern India serves a severely under resourced region where families come from hours away for heart care for their children.
“These are really great staff trying to do what they can with the resources they have,” Dr. Fisk said. “All they want to do is learn.”
Dr. Fisk shared that when she first met nurse Unni and his colleagues, they were eager to learn what to do and why they should do it. She and fellow volunteers from Boston Children’s Hospital incorporated more classroom teaching into onsite training visits, alongside bedside instruction, group discussions and simulation exercises. Throughout the partnership, Dr. Fisk has mentored nurses in the ICU on patient management, infection control, communication and working as a team.
The team listened, learned and acted. Dr. Fisk recalls nurse Unni sharing that he observed a potential source of cross contamination in his hospital and took the initiative to create a quality improvement project that eliminated the contamination source, reducing infections and creating a safer space for patients.
“That was amazing,” Dr. Fisk said. “It was his own project that he came up with. He did the intervention and told us about it.”
Efforts by Dr. Fisk and the PGIMER team through the Children’s HeartLink partnership are making a difference. Since the partnership began, the hospital has doubled the number of open-heart surgeries they can do, and mortality and infection rates have fallen significantly.
For nurse Unni, he’s now mentoring fellow nurses, leading quality improvement initiatives and presenting internationally.
The nurse Dr. Fisk once mentored is mentoring others. She now considers Unni a peer. He often sends her medical articles and asks for her opinion on current research.
“We are really lucky to have a mentor like Dr. Anna Fisk who deeply influenced us in our knowledge and practice,” said nurse Unni. “Throughout my career growth, she was with me. I am 100% obligated to her and to Children’s HeartLink for my current status as a faculty in pediatric cardiac nursing.”
Pictured: Left to right: Unni and Dr. Fisk with Children’s HeartLink staff members Adriana Dobrzycka and Bistra Zheleva and a fellow nurse at PGIMER, Sunil, attending the 8th World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery in Washington, DC, in 2023.
When nurses like Dr. Fisk invest their expertise, it creates a ripple effect of growing leaders like Unni.
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Building Trust, Growing Leaders
For Dr. Fisk, the value of Children’s HeartLink partnerships is measured in relationships.
“You can’t exchange virtual interactions for standing next to someone, looking at a patient together, talking through concerns and questions face to face,” she said. “Rapport and trust are built. You get dinner together. You get to know them. They trust you.”
What she teaches during training visits doesn’t stop when the volunteers return home. It continues to grow through the nurses who teach, mentor and inspire others, expanding the availability of high-quality heart care for children and their families for years to come.
