I have known Josh Wymer since he first volunteered with CCI as a CNOR Coach and his efforts with the True North Committee and Certification Council Working Group. Josh's contributions strengthened both the True North and CNOR Strong initiatives. As a CNOR Coach, he promoted professional development, clinical competence, and specialty certification across the country. With CNOR Strong, he led committee efforts to promote perioperative credentialing as a critical driver of professional development and clinical practice while highlighting facilities promoting the perioperative practice and credentialing excellence across their teams.

With Josh’s work as the first Chair of the Recertification Committee, I had an opportunity to work weekly and sometimes daily with Josh over two years as we recruited and trained volunteers to build CCI’s first points-based recertification library. His effort was vital to recruiting many motivated and contributing members who reshaped current clinical development resources to be more available, relevant, and reliable. Josh produced points activities totaling more than 1/3 of the total 1000-point recertification portfolio and had an immeasurable impact on the current and future recertification pathway for all CNOR nurses. These efforts increased the value of CCI’s credential and improved the ease of auditing the quality of perioperative education and clinical activities offered by the organization. It was a privilege to see him move up to the Board of Directors and benefit from his contributions which have included CCI Ambassador resources promoting the role of CCI and credentialing in perioperative clinical excellence.

Josh also led the development of the organization’s recognition program for staff, volunteers, and community partners serving the perioperative community and promoting perioperative best practices. His initiative developed collaboration with multiple national organizations that have greatly bolstered the support and recognition of the entire staff and volunteer perioperative nurses as well. Josh is widely recognized across the organization and the perioperative community as an enthusiastic champion of the profession and best practices. He is a role model for engagement and contributions that make all of us better, and he regularly invests his own time in individual perioperative nurses and community organizations in an effort to help them grow and be more effective in the delivery of safe patient care and better patient outcomes.

Josh walks the talk with many credentials and is a fellow of a couple of the most prestigious professional advocacy organizations in healthcare. His passion for excellence in perioperative nursing has taken him into other fields, but he has not lost sight of the bedside nurse and the patients who benefit when those nurses are engaged, recognized, supported, and championed. He is always accessible to the staff and volunteers and regularly participates in mentorship programs across the perioperative nursing and broader healthcare community. He is also a champion for developing others and includes junior nurses and those newest to the profession in presentation, writing, and recognition opportunities. Josh is uniquely gifted to recognize and value many perspectives, and he has made CCI’s staff and volunteers better through his collaboration and collective approach to decision-making and leadership. His endless energy, support of others in even the most trying circumstances, and desire to make himself and all of us better is the reason I am nominating him as someone who represents the very best in the qualities of a DAISY Nurse Leader.