Alicia Martinez is by far one of the most inspiring and dedicated Registered Nurses I have had the privilege of working for in my 11 years of nursing. She is the unsung hero the DAISY Award was meant for, as she is the Registered Nurse that works tirelessly behind the scenes driven by her passion for patient-centered care. It is hard to fully capture in words how her actions and work ethic embody the patient-first ethos, but I tried to give some examples that come to mind below.

Alicia identified critical patient safety-related compliance concerns in reporting structures within her department. She quickly gathered the key players, created a Process Improvement Initiative, and effectively changed reporting criteria and guidelines to ensure order clarity that directly impacted and improved patient safety. Creating institutional change across multiple departments in a large organization such as Kaiser is no easy feat and requires a level of determination, flexibility, adaptability, and self-assurance that what you are doing is what is best for our members. Alicia embodied this throughout the process and when others may have caved to the daunting nature of creating institutional change Alicia rose to the challenge.

Patients undergoing breast cancer surgery often require procedures in radiology prior to surgical procedures. Alicia recognized there were situations where patients would have to wait hours between their radiology procedure and their surgery due to access and scheduling issues. The thought of women having to wait, on what was already an extremely traumatic and stressful day in their lives, was unacceptable to Alicia. She took it upon herself to again engage the invested stakeholders to improve access so that our patients no longer must wait long periods between their Radiology procedures and breast surgeries.

Alicia is a go-to not only for those whom she directly supervises but even for those in other departments. One example that comes to mind is when a patient had a breast biopsy and there was difficulty controlling the bleeding in the Radiology Department. The technologist reached out to Alicia who will always answer her phone regardless of who is on the other line and quickly got to work. She was able to coordinate getting a Breast Surgeon in the same building to physically go to the Radiology Department to assist with the active bleeding. The patient was cared for, the bleeding was controlled, and the patient felt well cared for in a calm environment due to Alicia’s efforts behind the scenes. Alicia is the perpetual calm in the storm and without a doubt the person you turn to for reassurance and guidance when you feel that things are falling apart. She is more than happy to lend a hand to anyone in Kaiser, those under her leadership or not if it means making sure that a member is taken care of.

When our MRI department was low on grids and needed to scale back MRI guided biopsies, Alicia stepped in to facilitate communication between Medical Imaging, Radiologists, and Radiology Breast Care Coordinators. This ensured that there was a single plan and coordinated effort among multiple departments, but more importantly, Alicia ensured that patients received a single message, with streamlined care, and didn’t feel that their diagnosis or treatment was in any way being delayed or negatively affected. Alicia is forever thinking within the framework of “how will this affect the patient” and “how will the patient receive this messaging” and takes that mind frame and thinks 3 or 4 steps ahead of any decision or obstacle that may be presented to her. I believe it is this mentality and ability to think proactively that allows her to ensure that the patient experience and patient care are preserved and forever put at the center of any decision that is made. To say that this is crucial when working with Oncology patients who are already dealing with life and death and the most stressful moment of their lives is an understatement. I am just thankful that even when moments like the one I mentioned above happen – and may seem trivial – she takes the time to think critically and get ahead of the situation to make sure the patient and their experience aren’t negatively affected.

Alicia has made herself available to her team even when she is out on vacation, with her family, at her daughter’s softball tournament. There was one time when a major software program used in Radiology went down and her nurses didn’t know what to do as a workaround. Alicia saw what was going on in the chat, took the initiative and got on the phone, and immediately got to work on a workflow to ensure that newly positive breast cancer patients would still have their results called to them in a timely fashion. A delay was unacceptable to her, and she made sure that our patients were cared for as if they were her own family. “If that were my sister” and “if that were my mother” are phrases routinely used by Alicia and she treats all of the patients with the same level of care and consideration as she would her own family. Even if that means missing her daughter at bat to make sure that her nurses can see results in real-time back at work and get critical results reported to our members.

Alicia has expanded educational opportunities within her team to allow greater cross-coverage to ensure that patients are receiving seamless care without interruption. For example, due to her efforts, Radiology BCCs are now trained and educated to help run Tumor Board which had historically been run by Surgical Navigators. Tumor Boards are critical in ensuring that newly diagnosed breast cancer patients' diagnoses and treatment plans are discussed by a multidisciplinary physician team. By ensuring that Radiology BCCs can cover when Surgical Navigators are not available, there is no delay to this instrumental discussion and patients receive the recommendation of this interdisciplinary body in a timelier manner.

Alicia travels between three different locations – Rock Creek, Lone Tree and Franklin and has no real “home office” at any. She will wander the halls finding any available desk space, take meetings in her car, and all to make sure she is physically present for us – her team. She wants us to know that she is here for us and not just through a computer. It is important for her that her team feel supported – even if that means being a bit of a managerial nomad at times. This physical presence ensures that those on her team feel supported which in turn allows them to provide high-quality care for our members. Alicia cares more about patients and her team than any Registered Nurse you will come across at Kaiser. I believe our Breast Navigation Department stands to be a model of what patient-centered care should look like due to her leadership efforts.