I initially met Chris when I joined Kaiser as a staff nurse in the Fall of 2015. Our first interaction was during a training class for stroke nurses, and I still clearly remember her teaching me how to perform a swallow screen. As a new graduate nurse, I was feeling both excited and anxious about the training, but Chris’s calm, patient, and supportive demeanor were encouraging and reassuring. Little did I know that that first meeting would be the tip of the iceberg of the impact that she would have on my own career within the organization, which has contributed to us now being peers.

However, the reasons for this nomination entail much more than my personal experience with Chris – I am only one of many people whom she has positively influenced throughout her nursing career. This is a story about an amazing woman who has devoted her life to the nursing profession. Chris’s nursing journey began 38 years ago, when she was hired at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, California. After working there as a pediatric staff nurse and relief charge nurse for a few years, she transferred to Kaiser’s Anaheim facility, where she dedicated another 20 years of service to Pediatrics, including the Pediatric Oncology population. Although I did not personally know Chris during that time, one of the physicians who worked closely with her for 11 years, Dr. H shared with me that she remembers Chris’s soothing, calm voice and gentle touch in her approach to patient care. Even during occasions when the children were quite ill, Chris “always maintained her composure” and did her best to help her patients get better. Dr. H also noted that Chris “worked well with her nursing colleagues as well as the pediatricians and ancillary staff.” During her years as a pediatric nurse, Chris was actively involved in improving patient care as a staff representative on Nurse Quality, Practice & Standards, and Regional Informatics committees/councils.

In 2008, Chris became a clinical nurse educator for KP Orange County’s Staff Education department, a role in which she has made significant contributions hospital-wide. As a generalist educator, Chris oversees training and education events that impact the entire Anaheim campus, and she works closely with her peers to support nursing orientation as well as department-specific skills and competencies. For instance, she has coordinated facility-wide training for major equipment changes (new defibrillators and IV infusion pumps) in addition to countless in-services for new hospital beds, patient care products, IV tubing, home infusion pumps, and the like. Throughout the entire planning and training process, Chris is integral in assessing staff comprehension of new skills/products, need for ongoing education, and potential concerns. She serves as an advocate for staff and patients during planning and follow-up meetings with stakeholders, which often include department managers, upper leadership, and vendor representatives. Her advocacy ranges from developing efficient patient care workflows, ensuring adequate time and space for education, creating handouts for dissemination, and obtaining the needed supplies – which is sometimes the hardest part!

Beyond training, Chris plays a major role in ongoing education by assisting with presentations and skills (including safe patient handling, point of care testing, and infusion pump utilization) during Nursing Orientation for new and transferring staff. Since she joined the education department, Chris has also coordinated hospital-wide annual education days that service nurses and ancillary staff for both Kaiser Anaheim and Irvine facilities. In addition to helping the organization fulfill regulatory requirements for items such as safe patient handling and restraints, these education days address learning needs identified by frontline staff. Some examples of this tailored education include wound care, managing chest tubes, and Code Blue review/simulation. As such, these training days (and the locally developed self-learning modules that come with them) have (1) helped staff to maintain competency in their skills and (2) promoted continuous learning, which allows for the provision of safe and high-quality patient care.

In addition to her duties as a staff educator, Chris is closely involved in various multidisciplinary and nurse-driven committees, including Hospital Acquired Pressure Injury Prevention, Medication Safety, and Nursing Quality and Safety Council. She is the educational lead for the Anaheim-based Skin Champions, whom she supports by facilitating meetings, participating in the development of improved patient care practices and workflows, and creating educational resource binders that are shared on the units. Through these committees, Chris champions best practices across hospital departments that affect patient care. In fact, Chris’s involvement has been so impactful that the Associates for the Advancement of Nursing Science & Research (AANSR) presented her with the Athalie Award for Nursing Excellence in 2013 in recognition of her passion for excellence in nursing practice, specifically for her work with Nurse Champion Groups in Kaiser Permanente Orange County.

While Chris dedicates an enormous amount of energy to supporting hospital staff, she has also invested in her own professional development. She began her nursing career with a Diploma in Nursing from LAC/USC School of Nursing and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2004. She then continued her pursuit of higher education by enrolling in the Master of Science in Nursing Education program at Walden University, from which she graduated in 2019. Furthermore, Chris’s involvement with Nursing Quality’s Skin Champions has led to collaborating with physicians and nurses to write the article, “Dramatic reduction in hospital-acquired pressure injuries using a pink paper reminder system,” which was published in Advances in Skin & Wound Care in 2018. In this way, Chris serves as a role model for nurses to pursue higher education and research opportunities, and she demonstrates that learning and professional growth are indeed lifelong endeavors. She continues to support the professional development of staff by sharing her personal experiences with pursuing higher education and connecting nurses with resources that support formal education, continuing education, professional certifications, and local/national conferences.

At this point, you may be exhausted reading about the long list of things that Chris has tangibly done throughout her nursing career, and with 38 years of service, it is reasonable that she has had opportunities to do a lot during that time. However, what truly distinguishes Chris is not just that she has been so involved in bettering the nursing profession, but it is how she has made those contributions: with heart, genuine caring, and an unrelenting passion for supporting the success of nurses and the organization at large. When Chris is involved in a training or project, she gives it her all – from researching/gathering best practices and creating education handouts/presentations to conducting the actual training; Chris makes an effort to teach in a way that is relatable, practical, and effective so that nurses can apply these learnings to their practice. She has a willingness to (re)arrange her schedule to fit the needs of staff, including working very early mornings to train night shift nurses, coming in on weekends, attending a plethora of staff and committee meetings, and rounding on the units. Additionally, Chris is known for following up on any concerns that might arise regarding new products and unit workflows that could potentially compromise patient/staff safety, working with various groups (nurse leaders, Materials Management, ancillary departments, product vendors, etc.) to determine a plan that will benefit all stakeholders.

Perhaps an example that best demonstrates Chris’s willingness and passion for helping others is how she strived to help frontline staff during the Covid-19 pandemic. Just prior to the declaration of the pandemic, the Clinical Nurse Specialist for Critical Care Services had retired, leaving the ICU and DOU nurses without any education or guidance on how to care for patients who had contracted this novel virus. Despite not having a critical care background herself, Chris decided to make herself available as a primary resource to ICU/DOU staff. I recall her telling me the names of all the nurses she had gotten to know over the years on those units, the fear and anxiety they must be feeling, and how she could not just leave them to figure things out on their own. Chris listened to morning calls for Covid updates, researched official updates and recommendations from the CDC, learned about adult critical care practices, attended morning huddles, rounded on the units, and added any information she could find to resource binders for the staff. She even took charge of the critical care nurses’ competency days, working with vendors, her peers, managers, and staff champions to ensure that essential ongoing education was provided despite the physical and emotional chaos of the current work environment. In addition to the assistance that she offered to Critical Care Services, Chris also helped with patient care on the telemetry units, where she worked side by side with frontline staff during the winter surge. When I reflect on that first year of the pandemic, I realize that Chris stepped so far out of her comfort zone to support the nurses in the manner that she did, and I can assure you from our countless conversations as officemates that her inspiration stemmed from a deep sense of caring for the healthcare team, our patients, and upholding the virtues of the nursing profession.

Truly, she has honored the nursing values of compassion, teamwork, professionalism, integrity, and excellence in providing patient/family-centric care. With her retirement planned for later this year, it is bittersweet to consider Chris’s impact here at Kaiser Anaheim. For many of us, Chris has always been there. Even in the uncertainty of the past couple of years, her dependability has never wavered. It is strange to imagine what work life will be like without her, but it is comforting to know that she has planted more seeds here than you’d find on a wheat farm. Through her 38 years of service providing bedside care, establishing standards, advocating for staff and patients, and promoting professional development; she has transformed the lives of those around her both in direct and indirect ways. I have no doubt that Chris’s positive influence and example will continue to resonate with current nursing staff and leaders over the coming years, ultimately finding their way to shape future generations… and that is the achievement of a lifetime.