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Featured Nurse

The United States Public Health Service, A Wonderful Career!!!  

Please celebrate with us as we highlight and honor nurses who have achieved successful professional careers with the US Public Health Service.  

 

This Term's Honoree is:

CDR James LaVelle Dickens

cdr dickens

 

Commander James LaVelle Dickens serves in the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Regional Office, Office of the Secretary, Region VI Dallas, TX.

 

CDR Dickens is a Doctoral Candidate at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas. The focus of his doctoral research involves low birth weight and very low birth weight infants in District’s 7 & 8 of Kabul, Afghanistan.

In 2008, he was selected to participate as a clinical team member for the Afghanistan Health Initiative (AHI) in Kabul, Afghanistan. The mission of the AHI is to improve quality of care, and maternal and infant mortality rates at the Rabia Balkhi Womens’ Hospital. CDR Dickens deployed to Afghanistan multiple times, and was responsible for training of over one hundred nurses and lay midwives in the clinical standards of practice of the operating theater. CDR Dickens a Fellow of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners.

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The "Officer" Difference Print E-mail

Commissioned Corps officers are not just 8-to-5 employees. First, PHS officers must excel in performing their duties within the Agency they are assigned. Second, PHS officers are expected to take an active role within their work section and the PHS to promote and enhance the Agency’s mission and the image of the Commissioned Corps. Third, an officer must also juggle a large assortment of other responsibilities in order to perform their PHS mission successfully.

These responsibilities include but are not limited to:

  1. Understanding how to work with OCCO in order to maintain their CV, OPF, promotion papers, COERs, assimilation paperwork, awards etc;
  2. Constantly reviewing policies of the PHS that exist now or have been changed and/or updated to better understand the expectations of each officer and how things work within the personnel system;
  3. Maintaining professional credentials, to include licensing and continuing education;
  4. Preparing for and continuing the Commissioned Corps officer training (i.e., BOTC/IOTC, Leadership Training etc.);
  5. Readiness preparation along with updating and/or maintaining any current and new Readiness Standards and capabilities that become effective; and
  6. Preparing for and/or meeting the specific Category Benchmarks.
Even if a Commissioned Officer has performed all of the above responsibilities, he/she must be ready at a moments notice to deploy and possibly go into harms way anywhere in the world to help promote, enhance, and protect the Public Health of the American people.