According to research by New American Economy, more than one in five physicians and one in 11 nurses in the U.S. are Asian American or Pacific Islander. Even within VACC, around 12% of all VA-BC™s are Asian American or Pacific Islander. VACC is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this May to recognize such a significant player in the health care game.
“Having a specific day or month dedicated to Asian Pacific Americans acknowledges that we exist, we’re here, and we’re part of a bigger American community,” said VACC President-Elect Joanne Dalusung, DNP, APRN, AGACNP-BC, CCRN-K, VA-BC™.
Dalusung fell in love with vascular access in her early days as a nurse in the Philippines, where every nurse is trained to start their peripheral IVs after graduation.
“As a bedside critical care nurse, my coworkers would call [me] to start an IV whether it was an adult or pediatric patient,” she said. “I like procedures. I like the adrenaline.”
After moving to the U.S., she became an ICU nurse, then transitioned to the vascular access team. In recent years, Dalusung has gained the title of a nurse practitioner at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
At the core of her profession, as a nurse or nurse practitioner, her mission is to provide patient care at a personal level. Often, she will talk patients through a procedure to put them at ease. In one instance, she asked about a 60-year-old patient’s tattoo in the hopes of alleviating the woman’s nerves and received a story that still makes Dalusung smile as she tells it.
The tattoo was small, placed on the patient’s left wrist in the shape of an infinity sign. She had recently gotten the tattoo on her wrist for her daughter, who also got a nearly identical design. Together, the tattoos read “For you, I will do everything” for the patient and “For you, I will not fail” for the daughter.
“Those moments, as a health care provider, are the ones I treasure,” she said. It is how she remembers her patient encounters. “We think we’re taking care of them, but there are a lot of instances when we get life lessons and wisdom from our patients too.”
Her love for her patients led her to become more involved in the vascular access community beyond her institution. Through visiting conferences, staying up to date on best practices, and gaining her VA-BC™, she connected with other clinicians and advocated for her vascular access-dependent population: cancer patients.
In 2021, she became a Director on the VACC Board of Directors in the hopes of representing clinicians who give treatment to cancer patients. She was elected President-Elect this year and will ascend to President in 2023.
“I became more than just a practitioner who puts in an IV. I want to be an advocate, a voice,” she said. “I think of the vascular access specialty as an art and science with ongoing opportunities for improvement.”
To Dalusung, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month means acknowledging the contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, both past and present.
“It’s important that we know and look back to where we came from. There’s nothing wrong with our culture or where we came from because it shaped us today, and it is what leads us tomorrow.”
“It’s important that we know and look back to where we came from. There’s nothing wrong with our culture or where we came from because it shaped us today, and it is what leads us tomorrow”
