COL Vanessa Worsham is a strong senior leader with a vision that helped transform the Department of Nursing. COL Worsham emerged as a transformational leader during a period when a resilient nursing leader was needed. Military Nursing gave us the best of the best with a senior leader who was not only effective in the boardroom but also present at the bedside. COL Worsham is a senior nurse leader who was not only accountable for her contributions to delivering great leadership but projected a spirit of growing future leaders from all levels. COL Worsham is known for her motto of "pay it forward" and believed that with every leader she inspired, the leader had a responsibility to touch at least another nurse and inspire them to do great things!

The country under the present COVID-19 pandemic has seen changes in nursing practice, education, and patient care delivery. With these vicissitudes, COL Worsham remained present in promoting a visionary approach to the future that would continue to transform the military healthcare system. COL Worsham would sit in the middle of manager meetings and challenge the front line leaders to think beyond the present. COL Worsham a visionary leader would encourage the clinical nurse specialists and Service Chiefs to grow competent nurses to combat the projected COVID-19 surge in the winter of 2020 and beyond. In these meetings, she encouraged us to design, implement, and evaluate training models that would have the bedside nurses feeling ready to meet the pandemic. COL Worsham would say "train those nurses to a point that you would feel safe for them to take care of you and your dependents." Additionally, COL Vanessa Worsham has a way of collaborating with the multi-disciplinary team to implement ongoing improvement processes needed to keep Walter Reed above the rest! COL Worsham encouraged us to see that it is not enough to ease our efforts in process improvements but we must work with physicians and other members of the healthcare team to redesign and reform our efforts across the military medicine market.

COL Vanessa Worsham encouraged scholarly research and practice by supporting evidence-based improvements in nursing care. COL Worsham was known for asking "what does the Institute for Healthcare Improvement say?" and "what does the American Nursing Association say?" This non-threatening approach was her way of humanizing herself and empowering every nurse that she came in contact with. COL Worsham made sure that we at the middle leadership understood that we must look at our patient safety records and intentionally address opportunities to test our current nursing policies and processes reviewing them to see if there is an opportunity to improve and change our policies. A stickler for patient safety, COL Worsham was not afraid to hold us accountable and redirect our mistakes in a respectful way that made you know that she still valued you but expected that you do better!

COL Worsham as a full partner in nursing was an asset to the full health policy arena. COL Worsham was effective because she conceptualized the roles of nurses across the board. COL Worsham empowered us to see ourselves as part of the change we wanted to see at the organizational and national levels. She always told us that we as midline leaders are empowered to work with the multi-disciplinary team in redesigning healthcare in the United States.

As we bid farewell to our great leader COL Vanessa Worsham, we will remember her as a visionary "functional doer" who implemented thoughtful strategies through her informed decision making that are the cornerstone of military nursing! Thank you COL Worsham for all you are and what you did.

Your nurses at the Department of Nursing Services.