Cristina Dusek
November 2020
Cristina
Dusek
,
RN
Tallahassee Outpatient Clinic
North Florida / South Georgia Veterans Health System
Ms. Dusek is the go-to nurse that when faced with a different challenge, can keep standing tall during her nursing career and in her day-to-day life since she always does the right thing for the well-being of her patients.
Ms. Cristina M. Dusek works for the Sterile Processing Services (SPS) as the Nurse Educator/Coordinator at the Sergeant Ernest I. "Boots" Thomas VA Clinic located in Tallahassee, Florida. Her outstanding performance allows her to exceed the VA Mission, Vision, Core Values, and Goals on a daily basis.
Integrity
In nursing, integrity must come organically, but in Ms. Dusek's case, it could be said she was born with it. Ms. Dusek constantly behaves in a genuine and authentic manner when communicating her effective ideas through the Reusable Medical Equipment Committee. The latter is a forum between more than 22 different clinical services. As the lead for this forum, she is the organizer, presenter, and role model of this group and as a result, makes sure that all North Florida/South Georgia VA (NFSG) patients are well taken care of as well as safe. She consistently speaks up when something is unsafe for a patient, which requires careful deliberation and usually a degree of courage. That courage takes different forms, whether any service wants to make any procedure changes that could potentially affect the veteran's health. Her principles go beyond the normal person's limits since every decision that is taken within the aforementioned committee must be reported to the Medical Executive Committee (MEC). Ms. Dusek ensures every record is submitted to the SPS leadership, which subsequently is forwarded to the SPS Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN). Ms. Dusek is an indispensable resource to the Reusable Medical Equipment Committee and SPS Department because her integrity, honesty, and hard work ethic always make a substantial impact on patient safety.
Commitment
Cristina's commitment to her duties and responsibility as an RME Educator and Coordinator in SPS surpasses the expectations required. She is motivated by the safety and well-being of patients and staff. She is always willing to actively participate and contribute her expertise in solving issues related to SPS, patient and staff safety. She utilizes available resources with the purpose to educate SPS staff in the accurate precleaning, reprocessing, and storage of RME. To ensure every staff member receives the same information on education and training, she developed powerpoint presentations with voice recording and or videos. She developed "how to do" sheets as a reference for staff on how to do a specific task. Through the overseeing of quality assurance measures she confirms compliance of staff performing the reprocessing duties the same every time they sterilized or high-level disinfect different RME. She is constantly researching articles related to SPS and infection control for best practices with the purpose to implement them into the department to improve current practices.
Advocacy
Cristina is a firm enforcer of policies and standard operating procedures for patient's safety and well-being as well as for staff involved in the reprocessing and use of surgical instruments and devices. For the safety of the patients, she is always ensuring thorough assessment that procedures are performed every single time per established protocols. If there is any
discrepancy found during the assessment, immediate staff training is scheduled to ensure procedures are completed as dictated on written protocols. As a strong advocate for staff safety, in August 2020, she developed sterile processing hazard training. She worked on a hazardous chemical spread cheat. The focus of the spreadsheet was to educate staff and create awareness on the existing dangers of handling sterile processing chemicals, prevention of exposure, and treatment upon exposure. The training was made mandatory to all NF/SG SPS staff.
Respect
As an active voice for proper reprocessing of RME in NF/SG, she has gained the respect of administration, peers, and end-users. Her leadership style in unison with her RME knowledge, awesome communication skills, and constructive positive feedback has created an excellent environment when conducting on-the-spot corrections regarding the reprocessing, use, storage, and transport of RME, always having the patient best interest at heart. She quickly utilizes available resources to address and resolve reported issues regarding the reprocessing of RME. Cristina has been able to swiftly involve other pertinent services to resolve the issues in a timely manner without hesitation and with great demeanor.
Excellence
What makes a nurse display the Core Values of excellence? Ms. Dusek has been always recognized for her instrumental work in the design, development, implementation, and monitoring of educational practices and many policies for the SPS Department. For example, she has been the leading nurse when the SPS staff was in need of new education such as Hazardous Training, How to access eQMS and How to access Sharepoint. Ms. Dusek is constantly working to develop the NFSG SPS staff to further their professional growth, learning and helps them integrate that acquired knowledge within their complicated role with the NFSG VA System. Furthermore, when a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), a document that contains accurate and detailed instructions to perform a process or procedure to ensure that a procedure is performed the same way each time and the same way by each person, Ms. Dusek consistently ensures that the document provides all the needed information for the user to perform operations correctly and consistently to achieve her number one priority—patient safety.
Whether it's integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect, and excellence in all we do, Ms. Dusek is the go-to nurse that when faced with a different challenge, can keep standing tall during her nursing career and in her day-to-day life since she always does the right thing for the well-being of her patients.
Integrity
In nursing, integrity must come organically, but in Ms. Dusek's case, it could be said she was born with it. Ms. Dusek constantly behaves in a genuine and authentic manner when communicating her effective ideas through the Reusable Medical Equipment Committee. The latter is a forum between more than 22 different clinical services. As the lead for this forum, she is the organizer, presenter, and role model of this group and as a result, makes sure that all North Florida/South Georgia VA (NFSG) patients are well taken care of as well as safe. She consistently speaks up when something is unsafe for a patient, which requires careful deliberation and usually a degree of courage. That courage takes different forms, whether any service wants to make any procedure changes that could potentially affect the veteran's health. Her principles go beyond the normal person's limits since every decision that is taken within the aforementioned committee must be reported to the Medical Executive Committee (MEC). Ms. Dusek ensures every record is submitted to the SPS leadership, which subsequently is forwarded to the SPS Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN). Ms. Dusek is an indispensable resource to the Reusable Medical Equipment Committee and SPS Department because her integrity, honesty, and hard work ethic always make a substantial impact on patient safety.
Commitment
Cristina's commitment to her duties and responsibility as an RME Educator and Coordinator in SPS surpasses the expectations required. She is motivated by the safety and well-being of patients and staff. She is always willing to actively participate and contribute her expertise in solving issues related to SPS, patient and staff safety. She utilizes available resources with the purpose to educate SPS staff in the accurate precleaning, reprocessing, and storage of RME. To ensure every staff member receives the same information on education and training, she developed powerpoint presentations with voice recording and or videos. She developed "how to do" sheets as a reference for staff on how to do a specific task. Through the overseeing of quality assurance measures she confirms compliance of staff performing the reprocessing duties the same every time they sterilized or high-level disinfect different RME. She is constantly researching articles related to SPS and infection control for best practices with the purpose to implement them into the department to improve current practices.
Advocacy
Cristina is a firm enforcer of policies and standard operating procedures for patient's safety and well-being as well as for staff involved in the reprocessing and use of surgical instruments and devices. For the safety of the patients, she is always ensuring thorough assessment that procedures are performed every single time per established protocols. If there is any
discrepancy found during the assessment, immediate staff training is scheduled to ensure procedures are completed as dictated on written protocols. As a strong advocate for staff safety, in August 2020, she developed sterile processing hazard training. She worked on a hazardous chemical spread cheat. The focus of the spreadsheet was to educate staff and create awareness on the existing dangers of handling sterile processing chemicals, prevention of exposure, and treatment upon exposure. The training was made mandatory to all NF/SG SPS staff.
Respect
As an active voice for proper reprocessing of RME in NF/SG, she has gained the respect of administration, peers, and end-users. Her leadership style in unison with her RME knowledge, awesome communication skills, and constructive positive feedback has created an excellent environment when conducting on-the-spot corrections regarding the reprocessing, use, storage, and transport of RME, always having the patient best interest at heart. She quickly utilizes available resources to address and resolve reported issues regarding the reprocessing of RME. Cristina has been able to swiftly involve other pertinent services to resolve the issues in a timely manner without hesitation and with great demeanor.
Excellence
What makes a nurse display the Core Values of excellence? Ms. Dusek has been always recognized for her instrumental work in the design, development, implementation, and monitoring of educational practices and many policies for the SPS Department. For example, she has been the leading nurse when the SPS staff was in need of new education such as Hazardous Training, How to access eQMS and How to access Sharepoint. Ms. Dusek is constantly working to develop the NFSG SPS staff to further their professional growth, learning and helps them integrate that acquired knowledge within their complicated role with the NFSG VA System. Furthermore, when a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), a document that contains accurate and detailed instructions to perform a process or procedure to ensure that a procedure is performed the same way each time and the same way by each person, Ms. Dusek consistently ensures that the document provides all the needed information for the user to perform operations correctly and consistently to achieve her number one priority—patient safety.
Whether it's integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect, and excellence in all we do, Ms. Dusek is the go-to nurse that when faced with a different challenge, can keep standing tall during her nursing career and in her day-to-day life since she always does the right thing for the well-being of her patients.