In my 14 years here at Lakewood Regional Medical Center I have worked with many wonderful charge nurses in ICU, CCU, and DOU. Over the years I’ve marveled at his nursing skills and the compassion he has for his patients. There are people that you see in nursing who get into the profession for various reasons, with Ruel, you can tell he got into nursing because he wants to help people get better.

He has excellent customer service skills and he communicates well with his coworkers and physicians. His fellow charge nurses recognized his talents and his patience in precepting and mentoring newly hire nurses and nursing students. Ruel has the drive in himself to put forth his best effort. He gave his best whether that translates to a smooth shift, a clean and orderly unit, orientation and training of his ICU crew, compassionate care for all his ICU patients, and great collaboration and teamwork with the physicians.

Ruel is trusted and admired by his nursing colleagues. Even though there are many new nurses in the department, you wouldn’t know it because of the strong leadership exhibited by Ruel in developing competent and confident ICU staff by his nurses, most of our nurses are new to critical care. Most have transferred from Telemetry and Med Surg in search of specializing in the area of critical care. This harkens back to the statement made by Ruel’s past supervisors, “if you want them oriented the right way, have them under Ruel”. Ruel makes sure that he is right there at the bedside with the newbies when they are doing a bedside procedure, when they are learning to calibrate the ICP, or when they have to prone a patient for the first time. His nurses have written letters expressing how much they have learned from him, and the confidence he gives them to learn new things. He is like their safety net when they are navigating the tight rope of critical care.

He is always encouraging his staff to pursue professional growth and development. He goes to conferences with his staff and takes new ideas and implements them in the unit. One example was a concept he saw at a One Legacy conference. He wanted to implement the concept of the Honor Walk for the donor and the family. This was something that has never been done at Lakewood and Ruel worked with his nursing staff, implemented the consent, the paperwork and coordinated with the hospital administrators the process for the Honor Walk. This was so moving and emotional for the family. The whole hospital participated in honoring this patient as the patient was ushered through the hospital hallway on the way to the ambulance bay and then to another facility where the recipient was waiting for the donor and the organs.

Another example was during the height of the Covid pandemic, we were full of Covid positive patients in the unit that needed proning to maximize their respiratory capacity. We normally rent a bed to prone the patient. During this time, there was a shortage of Rotoprone beds because all the hospitals in the Los Angeles area were using it to prone their patients. Ruel was the only one who knew how to manually prone patients. He knew the procedure from another hospital and he was able to spearhead teaching the other ICU and CCU charge nurses quickly on how to manually prone and from there the charge nurses were able to teach the rest of the critical care staff. At the time this was crucial to us because we needed to prone 50% of our ICU patients and there was a shortage of Rotoprone beds. We were able to deliver this care despite the shortage of this bed resource.

Ruel is a joy to work with and understands how to work and collaborate with management and carry out initiatives that improve patient care. Ruel gives great suggestions and input to improve processes in the unit. Ruel has created an environment where you can see and feel the teamwork, camaraderie, and confidence in his leadership. Ruel is an exceptional representative of Nursing and a true DAISY Nurse Leader.