Dorcas Wanjohi
May 2023
Dorcas
Wanjohi
,
RN, BSN, PHN, MHA
Kaiser Permanente Registered Nurse Clinical Care
International Home Care Nurses Organization
Riverside
,
CA
United States

 

 

 

Due to her intense desire for patients to get exactly what they needed, she staffed cases with nurses with a similar background as patients which brought the greatest positive outcomes for the patients/staff but was the highest amount of stress on her personally.
Dorcas has been a faithful, compassionate, and skilled home health nurse for more than 2 decades. From humble beginnings serving neighborhood mothers as a midwife in Kenya to becoming a passionate Nurse Leader through home health/hospice/palliative and rehab care, Dorcas has displayed grace under pressure and resilience. She continues to excel in maintaining extraordinary relationships with patients, caregivers, physicians, and referral sources. Dorcas' work outside of employment is leading the building of homes for Kenyan widows and ensuring that Medically fragile children in California are well cared for. Dorcas serves as a beacon of hope for all of the international nurses she mentors.

Dorcas has been a strong influence for Kaiser Permanente since 2021. She came to the U.S. after a career in Kenya and the UK. She was a huge influence to the international nurses with whom she had supervised through her very diverse clinical background. She speaks other languages, and this helped with clinicians and patients who struggled with English as a second language. Due to her intense desire for patients to get exactly what they needed, she staffed cases with nurses with a similar background as patients which brought the greatest positive outcomes for the patients/staff but was the highest amount of stress on her personally.  Prior to coming to Kaiser, Dorcas helped to establish the first Hospital in Home service in San Bernardino, CA. They successfully kept patients from being admitted to the local hospital and allowed clinicians including physicians to visit the patient at home. In addition, Dorcas also worked to implement and deploy the first Telehealth program from the KP-Fontana as the first round of COVID hit.  She was able to decrease the potential spread of the disease through both the patients and staff alike. Dorcas had taken on the role of 2-3 additional supervisors when they had been out on leave. She was always very supportive of staff being able to maintain great a work/life balance. Her focus was to ensure that international staff were able to maintain a long leave time to return to their home country.  This created a significant challenge in making sure patients were adequately staffed. It had been a huge key in recruiting and retaining staff and meeting the diverse needs of a county and state with over 150 languages in their service area. 
 
Currently, Dorcas is very active outside her career by doing projects in international service work. Her projects have supported building houses for widows in her home country as well as supporting the local caregivers of medically fragile children. Dorcas stands as a sterling example of what the life of an International Home Care Nurse does in this world.