Serves as a role model for compassion and exemplary practice: Cheryl is a role model for many, because she is compassionate, caring, and welcoming to everyone she encounters on a daily basis. Cheryl actively listens to her staff with not only her ears, but with her heart. Cheryl shows exemplary practice in many ways. One of the ways that really sticks out in our minds is when COVID-19 hit us. She helped create new systems, policies, flow maps, and courses of action to implement the ARC and T-200. This new process clearly laid out the expectations, duties, roles, and responsibilities of everyone involved. This also helped separate the patients who were sick with COVID-19 symptoms and those who did not have symptoms, which is important because we see a lot of immunocompromised and immunosuppressed patients. This made our most vulnerable patients the safest they could be. She listened to our concerns when the ARC closed and we were getting bogged down with veterans wanting a COVID test, but not wanting to see a provider. She took our concerns, created, and implemented a ‘Swab and Go’ policy for the veterans who only wanted a COVID test, and did not want to see a provider. This significantly improved the veteran experience, because they were given a choice to either stay and see a provider or to go home and receive the test results via phone call. This positively impacted the patient flow in Urgent Care, by having those veterans who did not want to wait for their results be able to leave the premises, thus allowing more room and time for the veterans who did need to be seen. This new process also reduced exposure time and risk of infection from sick veterans to healthy veterans and staff. Having a smooth and steady flow throughout Urgent Care is of utmost importance when it comes to taking care of very sick veterans and having a high volume of patients to take care of.

Creates an environment where attributes of trust, compassion, mutual respect, continued professional development, and ethical behavior are modeled and supported: Cheryl carries herself in a way that when she walks into a room, you are able to breathe a little easier because you know she cares, respects, and values you. She will not only back you up, but also pick you up when you fall down. Cheryl wants the best for her staff; she wants us to learn and expand our knowledge, and she wants us to succeed. She encourages and allows her staff to attend educational opportunities and classes; she knows this will help to provide better service to our veterans and improve staff knowledge and confidence. Cheryl is not afraid to jump in and do what is best for our veterans and her staff, for example, she is currently serving as a ‘Process Owner’ for a unit yellow belt project. Cheryl has earned our trust by showing us her grit, determination, and perseverance. Most importantly, when she says she will look into something, she actually does look into it, and comes back and gives us the answers we were wondering about. Cheryl follows through with what she says she will do. That is something that not everyone can say about their supervisors. Cheryl is fair, judicious, trustworthy, caring, open-minded, thoughtful, reliable, dependable, and kind.

Motivates staff with a shared vision and enthusiasm to achieve better outcomes for themselves and for their patients: Cheryl will do what she can and advocates for our team to help our veterans get the best care. When Urgent Care is extremely busy or running with short staff, she will generate additional staff to help keep the department running smoothly. This helps decrease patient wait times, while enhancing departmental safety, in turn, leading to higher patient satisfaction and greater care for our Nation’s heroes. There was a long lag time between sending 1:1 documents and paper IMED consent forms to scanning and getting them scanned into the veteran’s medical chart. Instead of just assigning this to the Urgent Care MSAs, Cheryl approached them and asked if they would be willing to take on another task. After the MSAs said they could trial it, she then went to their supervisor to make sure it was okay with them. The MSAs trialed it and decided they could take this task on permanently. This has significantly decreased the lag time. Now, the nurses give the documents to the MSAs, the MSAs scan them, and send a message to the scanning department and the process is completed within one day.

Is accessible, available, and responsive to the needs of others, encouraging critical thinking and problem solving for individuals and with the context of teams: When speaking with Cheryl, she always makes you feel important, she validates your concerns, she is receptive, respectful, and encouraging. She is transparent with what is going on, she is encouraging motivating, and inspirational. She believes in improving things, even if it is little things, if it could help someone or make it easier for the veterans, we should do what we can. She encourages problem-solving ideas and critical thinking. For instance, upon receiving critical results from lab or imaging, the process used to be to contact Urgent Care. This was very inefficient because it was difficult for Urgent Care to reach the ordering provider to notify them of the critical result. This was extremely unsafe for the patients, as it would at times take up to two hours to contact the ordering provider. Cheryl worked for over a year to initiate, prepare, propose, and support a change for this. The new process that Cheryl implemented allows lab and imaging to bypass Urgent Care and directly contact the ordering provider’s nurse, who can relay the result in a timely fashion since they are near the provider. With the interventions that Cheryl took, the care that the patient needs is expedited, which is crucial, especially when the patient is having a medical emergency. This ensures the veterans get world-class care, which is what we should all strive to do for our Nation’s heroes.

Is a mentor to staff: Cheryl has been a valuable mentor to our Urgent Care team. She encourages staff to take on process improvement projects. In Lean terminology, she is the process owner for one nurse’s Yellow Belt project. Cheryl eagerly attends meetings that this nurse facilitates and advocates for her system redesign project, which is aimed at decreasing the length of stay for our Urgent Care patients. She understands that patient satisfaction is key to our mission. By doing these things she helps to promote problem-solving for our unit with the ultimate goal of providing excellent patient care. She is always accessible when Urgent Care has critical moments with a timely response and provides assistance by finding additional staff, resources, and advice as needed.

Integrity: Cheryl has the utmost integrity. She will always do what is right, no matter who or what it involves.

Commitment: Cheryl is committed to the health and safety of all veterans and staff.

Advocacy: Cheryl is a great advocate for her staff, she voices her concerns and brings our concerns forward.

Respect: Cheryl has great respect for all staff, veterans, and visitors. She always shows respect to everyone she is encountering.

Excellence: Cheryl is the perfect example of excellence. She works hard and fights for our veterans and staff. Cheryl is everything, and more, that one would want as their nurse manager.