Virginia Hagen's clinical skill and especially her compassionate care exemplify the kind of nurse that our patients, their families, and our staff recognize as an outstanding role model.
She works as an LPN in the Alexandria HBPC program. She assists and supports the mission of the VA with her outstanding services to Veterans in the HBPC program. Virginia not only contributes to her local HBPC team but also routinely assists the coverage and workload at the Montevideo HBPC program as well. She always puts the needs of the Veteran first, and is willing to assist other HBPC team members to ensure that Veterans receive the highest quality of care.
The Montevideo HBPC program had an unexpected extended staff leave related to a family emergency, resulting in detailing of RN who works half time in each program to Montevideo. During this time of leave, Virginia assisted the coverage of additional home care visits in the Alexandria HBPC program. For a 2 week time frame the remaining RN in Montevideo was on scheduled leave, resulting in need for coverage of all home care during that timeframe. Virginia volunteered to provide coverage for the majority of the home care visits, volunteering to stay overnight in the Montevideo area due to the distance and number of visits that needed to be completed. She came in to Alexandra CBOC each Sunday to print out documents and prepare for visits, and left early in the morning to make the 2 hour drive to the Montevideo Area. Also on one of her normal telework days, she received a call from the Montevideo CBOC staff and community home care agency about a concern of a malfunctioning medication carousel for a Veteran she had seen on Monday. The Veteran has dementia, no family in the area, and there was concern that he would not be taking the medication appropriately through the weekend. Virginia drove to Alexandria CBOC from her home, prepared for visits, then drove 2 hours to evaluate what was occurring in the Veteran's home. She was able to correct the issue with the medication carousel and set up emergency back up medication for the Veteran to try to ensure he was safe for the weekend. The Veteran had not taken his medication from Tuesday until she arrived on Friday. Thanks to Virginia, the Nurse Manager and a social worker then followed up with his family to express concern about his on-going ability to remain in the home setting. Virginia also teleworked an additional 7 hours that weekend to complete clinical documentation on her home visits for the week.