I would like to nominate the two nurses on my primary care team through VA Boston, I am the Nurse Practitioner of the team. Tara Cullen LPN is the salt of the earth. She is always seeing the bigger picture when it comes to our veterans' needs. Whether it's helping a homeless veteran clean his feet with dignity, organizing furniture delivery for a veteran in need of a bed, volunteering to clean the apartment of an octogenarian veteran whose wife had passed, to food delivery for our food insecure veterans. Tara has an amazing sense of humor and can often be heard making our patients and colleagues laugh, despite the often heavy nature of our job.

Heather Meyer RN is a dream to work with. She is often described as an angel by our veterans. Heather on her own reached out to her church community and organized Thanksgiving and Christmastime food baskets that she and Tara delivered. Heather also was able to pass out gift cards to our youngest veteran patient who was struggling to get on his feet. Heather advocates for our patients and is not afraid to speak out if it appears a veteran is not getting his or her needs met.

Our team cares for most of our female veteran population in Lowell. Tara Cullen assists me during pap and pelvic and breast exams and she is very skilled at making sure our female veterans have the best experience possible during these sensitive exams. Heather Meyer meets once per week with one of our young female veterans who needs to do a weekly subcutaneous injection on herself but needs emotional support to do it. Heather was a huge source of emotional and spiritual support to one of our female veterans whose daughter only lived 16 hours.

Nurses rule the world we all know this. It's a privilege to have two such caring skilled nurses on my team.