NEW YORK NURSE: October/November 2007
by Mark Genovese
During her decade as a laboratory technologist, Kimberly Velez wanted to know more about the patients for whom she was working up results.
“They were more than just numbers to me. I needed to put a face to them,” Velez said. “I’d ask the medical staff a lot of questions. One day a physician said: ‘You have such an interest in the patients, you should become a nurse.’” Velez did become a nurse and an active leader in NYSNA. For all of her work in rebuilding her local bargaining unit at Coney Island Hospital, Velez was named recipient of the 2007 Delegate Assembly Award.
Several veteran leaders at Coney Island had just retired when Velez joined NYSNA, and she saw the bargaining unit was in need of revitalizing. She started recruiting RNs to build up a core group. “NYSNA members at my facility found it empowering to learn all of this valuable information, bring it back to their units, and then take action.”
Velez is a former Leadership Fellow and has served as an officer of the Functional Unit of Direct Care Practitioners and representative to the American Nurses Association House of Delegates. She also serves as an auxiliary member of the New York State Board for Nursing and is a member of the board of directors of the Nurses Association of the Counties of Long Island/NYSNA District 14 and a trustee on its political action committee.