Whereas I’ve the pleasure of working with so many implausible oncology nurses, I need to nominate Makayla Claussen, RN, BSN, MBTCN. I met Makayla at Vanderbilt’s inpatient myelosuppression/stem cell transplant unit about 4 years in the past. It will be an understatement to say she lights up each room she’s in. Her vitality and positivity are infectious.
As a 10-year most cancers survivor herself, Makayla fiercely advocates for each affected person in her care. Whereas the clinic was in a troublesome scenario for staffing, Makayla labored time beyond regulation to behave as a post-transplant coordinator for the clinic’s a whole lot of acute and long-term allogeneic transplant recipients. On prime of that, she additionally FaceTimes our CAR-T cell remedy sufferers nightly to carry out their immune effector cell assessments — that are supposed to determine neurotoxicity from the remedy — and is their first contact on velocity dial if one thing goes awry.
In emergent conditions, she acts as a consolation to the sufferers and household and a frontrunner to the workers, serving to to maintain the calm. Her palms are by no means idle, and her favourite phrase is, “I’m right here to serve.” As a clinic nurse, I recall numerous instances the place she has jumped in to help with administration of decompensating sufferers.
Now, she has moved on to a management function in our clinic, however she takes each alternative she will to leap in and assist with direct affected person care. She cares for our sufferers like household. She is what each oncology nurse hopes to turn into. She is the smiling face each affected person with most cancers hopes to see in essentially the most troublesome time of their life.
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