There is a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning where, in it, there is a line that says, “let me count the ways.”

In my combined 32 years here at Hershey, I have met many nurse educators, either as a staff nurse or as a member of leadership. Most have been good, and some exceptional. That is where I put Dan, in the latter category.

When Dan first came to be the educator of the Heart and Vascular Inpatient Units, I didn’t even know who he was. I later found out that he came from Neuro. I said to myself, “How is this going to work? He knows Neuro ICU, he knows brain drains, strokes, spinal cord injuries, and tumors, but what does he know about HVI? We have balloon pumps, ECMO, Impella’s, LVAD’s… oh my!”

I am happy to say that Dan has shown me just how flexible and capable he is in completely changing his professional direction and learning a whole new skill set, which he has done so without a hiccup.

The one thing that stands out about Dan is his professionalism and his calmness in the face of everybody else’s anxiety and negativity. He has completely transformed the HVI educational process and the staff’s opinion of unit education.

How did Dan do that, you might wonder? Through his passion for teaching. He actively engages the unit council and helps them focus on what is important for their education. He comes to our council meetings and asks, “What are your concerns? Your fears?”

When staff talk about a specific patient population that we might not see often, he takes that concern and develops the process to educate staff. Over the years he has been with us, he has come to council with the tools to make us successful.

At the last council meeting, he brought a pseudo trach patient—a piece of a manikin that you can place on yourself so it feels like you’re suctioning a real patient. This was done after members of the council expressed that we have been seeing more trach patients and staff felt they could use more practice with suctioning, listening to breath sounds, and doing trach care.

He also helps mentor our council for Blitz Days, helping them develop the stations and gather all the educational materials needed for staff to practice and get signed off on.

In his role as unit educator, he works with our new hires, helping determine what education they need and how best to provide them with the tools to be successful. In this role, he also works with new graduate nurses in the hospital’s Nurse Residency Program. He attends check-ins, providing feedback and goal setting that keep them on track for graduating from the program. In addition to graduate nurses, Dan has assisted in international nurse onboarding as well.

Dan’s positive attitude is refreshing. He takes it on as his personal goal to make each and every nurse successful. His insight is invaluable when we are wrestling with how to help a nurse who may be struggling for any number of reasons.

How should we proceed? Is it more education, or is some form of disciplinary action warranted? He is calm, asks questions that make us all think, and then we formulate a plan. What is so helpful is that he never allows emotion to interfere when making suggestions, which is invaluable for those of us who sometimes allow emotion to get in the way of making the right decisions.

I think that Dan is very deserving of this award. He has embraced a new direction in his career, taking on the role of teacher, mentor, and leader. He has completely changed his service line specialty, learning all that is HVI, and has fully embraced his new path.

And I, for one, am so glad that his path led him to us.