Nominated by Susan Reeves | Speech Therapist

Crystal Dolan-Delgado joined Nor Lea in June 2024, right out of graduate school. Her work ethic is exceptional as she rolls up her sleeves to do whatever it takes to take care of her patients and their families. She has inherited a tremendous caseload with minimal documentation time yet this week she gave up several hours in her weekly schedule to advocate for a patient who has purchased an augmentative communication system prior to her coming to Nor Lea. As often happens because it takes a long time to get these AAC systems funded, they come after their attending therapist is often in a different position and Crystal who has only had minimal experience with AAC prior to coming to Nor Lea, inherited several who are either about to get funded for AAC or just received their device right before she came. Often to take care of the patient's needs with the devices, the family and the clinician are learning as the patient is learning about this specific AAC system. Crystal's patient's mother is challenged to work on computers at all, yet she now is in a position to learn how operate a system which is computerized for her cognitively and emotionally challenged son, so she can assist him in the home. This family here at Nor Lea only speaks Spanish and luckily Crystal speaks Spanish so when the device was not working the IT dept had to be contacted so she jumped in and made the call for the family. The AAC company did not have a trained IT person available who spoke Spanish, and they had to troubleshoot with the mother in order to hopefully fix the problem on the device. Crystal sat on the phone or was on standby to assist this mother several hours, in order to walk through the IT person's suggestions as she became aware, this mother not only had a challenge ahead of her due to her lack of English but she also was not knowledgeable about computers and the speaking device who son was not attempting to use, is a computerized, speech generating device. Every suggestion the IT person was expecting this mother to walk through as he tried to troubleshoot over the honest was beyond her client's mom's ability so Crystal stayed on the phone with this mother and IT person or was at least on standby, while she rearranged her clients, etc. and when nothing was resolved for her patient and his mother, she took it upon herself to reschedule with the IT support personnel, giving away her only documentation time for the next day. Crystal demonstrates compassion for all her patients, and she does whatever it takes to make their load a bit easier even if it means she has to stay late or rework her schedule in order to get everything accomplished for her patients and for the speech dept. She is a new graduate. These skills most supervisors do not see in their clinical staff, if ever, until they have several years of experience. Crystal's ability to take things in stride as she determines the best course of action is exceptional in multiple ways, but her driving force appears to be her compassion and service to others as she demonstrates her ability to truly care enough to go that extra mile.

“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.”- Pat Summitt

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