Veronica Carlton is a pact RN in the Blue team and has been an outstanding RN in primary care for 8 years. For a few years, she was highly paneled due to staffing issues and willingly handled her assignment of multiple providers with much ease and no complaints. She does not leave things unanswered and addresses all concerns quite promptly.

For close to a year, she has been without a pact LPN and continues to keep her teamlet afloat and handles her workload efficiently, still having time to assist others as needed. She works with one of the most challenging providers who has a lot of complex patients on his panel. She huddles with him frequently and seeks ways to ease his burden within her scope. She does not shy away from work, and she is very passionate about caring for our veterans. She is a great resource/mentor to all in the clinic, including new providers in PC. She is great at developing a rapport with all her patients and does a phenomenal job at de-escalating situations with unsatisfied veterans with respect, and does so with ease. She resolves their issues, also takes every opportunity to educate them on various things, and all her patients are not just satisfied but leave happy with the care they receive from her.

She has great triaging skills, which is an asset in Primary care. For a few years now, every morning, she reviews all of her patients on her panel who were admitted, discusses them with her provider, and they both squeeze a few minutes out of their busy schedules to make quick rounds on these patients together. Consistently for the past few years, she walks over to dialysis to check on one of her patients, completes wound care, EKGs if needed, reviews the plan of care with him during dialysis, to decrease the burden on the patient of having him transported down to the Blue team. She has willingly cancelled her telework days many, many times to come into the clinic when her provider is out on leave to address any needs for their patients in person.

While all the nurses chose to telework 2-3 times a week, Veronica chose to only telework one day a week for the past few years to be accessible to her patients and her provider. She is my one RN who diligently reviews the almanac, high can scores, and works on her eQm metrics every week, and has truly been doing care management for over a year now. She has significantly improved her post-discharge metrics for her teams over this fiscal year. She excels in the quality and productivity of her work every day, goes above and beyond, volunteers to be a champion, and works on committees, not for her career gain but only passionate in caring for any and all veterans. She also frequently helps out on the inpatient units when help is needed.

Veronica has also volunteered for community outreach over weekends when needed over the past year TES related to the Pact Act. Ms. Carlton is an asset to the Blue team, to primary care, and also to the VA. Veronica stands out because she is committed and exceeds in demonstrating the ICARE values not for a season but year after year after year, and does so joyfully and purposefully.