Words to describe this amazing Nurse are hard-working, diligent, compassionate, caring, and resilient. I’m always amazed by the amount she accomplishes and navigates day to day with multiple medical evolutions and patient care happening simultaneously. She’s organized, and her attention to detail ensures the thousands of students leave for the fleet fully medically ready. She not only goes above and beyond in her role, but she is a steady supporting figure to the corpsman and leadership.

Even when there are piles of immunization screening forms on her desk, she will stop to educate, advise, or lend an ear to someone having a hard time. Her compassion is consistently shown to staff and patients. It doesn’t matter if there are 200 students in the hallway waiting for vaccines, she answers all of their questions, reviews their records if there are concerns, or has a distracting chat for a student who is afraid of needles. Watching her work daily leaves me in awe and leads me to believe she has superpowers.

Beyond her amazing character, work ethic, and grit, her work produces value. All her efforts lead to the completion of 7,998 vaccination encounters annually. By scrubbing records and titers, she saved the command $834K in vaccination costs. Thanks to her good catch and expeditious escalation to leadership, she additionally saved the command $8k in unwasted vaccines. This only seems to scratch the surface of her impact at this command. Mrs. Russell has been an employee at this command for nine years and, to my knowledge, has never been formally recognized for the significant impact she has on NMRTC’s mission. She is highly appreciated, valued, and loved by the staff, students, and OTCN counterparts. She is the embodiment of the qualities of a DAISY nurse.