Awards Dinner honors winners of perioperative nursing achievement awards: Saturday, April 20, 2002 - Awards

AORN Journal,  July, 2002  by Brenda S. Gregory Dawes,  Nancy K. Kuehl

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Laughter, camaraderie, and recognition filled the room at the Awards Dinner held at the Anaheim Marriott, Calif. The room quickly filled as hundreds of AORN members and their guests gathered to honor the winners of AORN's annual awards. The dinner was hosted by President Sheila L. Allen, RN, BSN, CNOR, CRNFA, who presented the Award for Excellence in Perioperative Nursing. In addition, President Allen presented awards for outstanding achievement in perioperative clinical nursing education, perioperative nursing management, perioperative academic nursing education, and mentorship, as well as chapter awards for legislative activities, membership, newsletters, and continuing education. Chapter of the Year awards also were presented during the exhilarating evening.

EXCITEMENT AND PASSION STIMULATE PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE

The 2002 Award for Excellence in Perioperative Nursing was presented to Cynthia Spry, RN, MA, MSN, CNOR, an AORN member with a determined ability to spark enthusiasm in others while staying highly motivated to accomplish professional goals. Spry entered nursing school to pursue a degree in nursing after 12 years in a comfortable, satisfying, and rewarding teaching position. Her decision to seek responsibilities that would keep her excited and passionate about her work has been a foundation for other choices that have qualified her for this prestigious award.

Spry initially graduated from Wagner College, Staten Island, NY, with a bachelor of science degree in education and worked as a teacher in elementary and specialty schools in New York. After deciding to make a career change, she attended Wagner College and graduated with a bachelor of science degree in nursing. She also earned her master of science degree in nursing administration from Wagner. Spry credits experiences and the people from her first job working the night shift on a nursing unit for the valuable approaches to decision making and implementation she has learned and used throughout her career. She has had management responsibilities at two different New York hospitals (1990-1995) and has been employed in several positions for Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP), a Johnson & Johnson Company, (1995-present). These positions, including her most recent as an international clinical consultant, have meshed her teaching and nursing skills, allowing her to achieve unexpected accomplishments.

Listen and do. Spry's many accomplishments have been a result of listening to her inner voice and determining that she is accepting the right responsibilities at the right time. She has authored two widely used nursing textbooks, served as a consulting editor for a perioperative management text, and is a contributing author to several other textbooks. She also has authored more than 40 articles in a variety of health care journals. Her initial venture as a textbook author resulted from listening to a nurse who told her that the content she was teaching provided an excellent lesson plan that might be useful to others if it was made available. Spry pursued publishing the content as a textbook so she could benefit more people than just those she was teaching.

Spry's can do attitude has led to many ventures, including her appointment to AORN's Entry into Practice committee. Even though Entry into Practice was a new initiative at the time, a positive attitude about the experience resulted in meeting new friends, learning, and helping to establish AORN's position. Spry credits her successes to always being willing to try something different and look for new approaches while acknowledging possible roadblocks without allowing them to hinder the next steps or improvements.

A different look at the same problems. Spry encourages professional growth, commitment, and excellence as she lectures at AORN chapter meetings, state council meetings, and other nursing organization meetings. She says that people cannot be motivated by others, but they can be encouraged to look at things differently and motivate themselves. She tells a story about a cardiac setting and how simple it can be to improve oneself and invest in the future. In the story, cardiac surgical services were going to be eliminated. This involved a group of nurses who were skilled in assisting with open heart surgery but who were not interested in learning other types of procedures. These nurses were skilled in only one specialty, so if they were not assisting with open heart procedures, they were taking many hours of personal time to make up the difference in their pay. Finally, one nurse from the team said she wanted to learn orthopedics. On a day when there was a total hip replacement procedure starting at 2:30 PM, this nurse refused to stay to learn the procedure because it would have extended past work hours and she would not have been on duty or paid.

Two other nurses who did learn skills without expecting to be reimbursed became successful in other specialty areas. Their willingness to look at the bigger picture and the potential opportunities versus the immediate return resulted in professional benefits that improved their future employability. Spry encourages others to consider the long-term benefits of a decision versus looking only at the immediate results and to weigh benefits of decisions by looking at old problems in different ways.