Christy Ringler is one of our Oncology Nurse Navigators, but she wears many hats at Platte Valley Hospital, as she has recently become our inpatient team's liaison for providing education and referrals to Intermountain's Palliative and Hospice program as well. Christy juggles both roles with professionalism and grace, and is the perfect person to hold space for heavy, end-of-life conversations with patients and their loved ones. She balances these roles effortlessly and consistently demonstrates excellence, empathy, and utmost care in our outpatient Oncology team. We had a recent situation where a patient called her in extreme distress, experiencing domestic violence at home. Christy triaged this patient to ensure safety and helped develop a plan for him to come to the hospital for assessment, both physically and emotionally. She collaborated with me, the clinic's LCSW, and together we provided reflective listening and care, assessing for suicidality and safety at home. Christy's rapport with this patient allowed him to open up to me and share honestly how he's doing. She sat patiently with him, at his request, during my suicide assessment, and helped us co-create a safe plan for him to return to his community and be safe with provided resources and care.

Christy's patience, quick thinking, compassion, collaboration, and excellent clinical care allowed for this patient to be safely assessed and triaged from a dangerous situation, all of which are above and beyond her role as an Oncology Nurse Navigator and Palliative Nurse Educator. Our team is truly fortunate to work with Christy and to consider her a valued colleague. I don't know what might have happened to this patient had he not felt safe and comfortable calling Christy in his moment of crisis. Thank you, Christy, for supporting this patient when he needed it most, and for the countless other oncology patients you help navigate, as well as the end-of-life patients you counsel while they are hospitalized. You are incredible at what you do.

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Christy's recent work within our hospitals' inpatient teams enables end-of-life and very sick patients to receive the much-needed hospice and palliative care education that our hospital was previously unable to provide. Christy's background in hospice care allows her to do this. I see her collaborating with various teams and getting multiple calls in a single afternoon on different patients to leave the Oncology clinic and intervene inpatient. This is resulting in reduced lengths of stay for patients who do not want to be hospitalized and have goals to be comfortable at home or in the community, and allows them to die with dignity, in the way they want to. Christy's confidence and ability to have these hard conversations are what these patients need, as hospitalist teams are sometimes spread thin and/or unable to hold space for these important goals-of-care conversations. Christy's work is reducing Platte Valley Hospital's overall inpatient mortality rate and allowing patients and their loved ones to seriously consider where they want to be at the end of life and what type of care they want to receive.

Separately, Christy is training a new Oncology Nurse Navigator to help meet the needs of our expanding oncology clinic. She is also maintaining her own oncology caseload to navigate, along with running our hospital's lung cancer screening program. It is truly remarkable how much Christy is able to balance and handle, and you would never suspect she is doing this much, because with Christy, you can guarantee that every interaction will be met with a smile, a warm gentleness, and an openness to collaborate about any patient need. Christy is a role model and leader for our team, simply by the way she conducts herself, and I cannot think of someone more deserving of this award. The story mentioned above is one of many that highlights how safe and valued our patients feel with Christy and are able to place trust in Christy to manage their oncology care.