April Employee of the Month

Mary Ellen Stamets, Cancer Registry Manager at Hunterdon Regional Cancer Center

Here are a few highlights from Mary’s nominations:

• Mary encompasses all five of the core values. She shows an extreme level of commitment and accountability in her role as manager of the cancer registry. There is much to keep organized and up to date and she works tirelessly to get her work done.
• Mary is a valuable member of the team and without her expertise and professionalism the Cancer Center accreditations would not go so seamlessly. She has helped us to earn numerous accreditations throughout the years by being accountable for the data presentation of all of those who participate in these accreditations. Our team puts our data and information together and Mary reviews it all, making excellent suggestions to be sure that we are delivering top notch information.
• There is no question about whether or not Mary is adaptive! Through the years I’ve seen the Cancer Registry department need to change their registry software programs multiple times in order to meet certain registry-related and CoC requirements. Mary, without batting an eye, will do whatever it takes to learn the new program and use them successfully in order to ensure department and cancer center compliance. She’s even identified significant flaws within the various registry software programs and brought the error/issues to the CoC to be acknowledged and corrected!
• Mary is truly a team player and treats everyone with the same level of respect. Mary is unbiased and inclusive when it comes to all aspects of her role. For example, Mary will always include all of the cancer center staff, as well as anyone else that may be potentially affected by changes to any of the NAPBC or CoC standards. No one can ever say they’re surprised weren’t aware of changes because Mary always makes sure to include anyone/everyone when she sends out important and time-sensitive information and updates.
• Mary is incredibly committed to her job. She will stay late and even come in on the weekends to finish up work that needs to be completed on deadline. She is always willing to help a fellow employee find necessary documentation to ensure that work is completed correctly. She may not have direct patient care but the work she does is vital to ensuring we can deliver the best care possible.
• Oftentimes, Mary is short staffed and she speaks up and advocates for her department to provide the best service possible, to meet her deadlines.
• Mary does an excellent job empowering our team to stretch ourselves and move forward with research studies of our own, and collaborating with other team members for research as well to show how Hunterdon shines and helps meet the needs of the patients and our standards for accreditation.
• You can always count on the information that Mary provides to you because you know that it is accurate and that she has double checked it before passing it on to you. This level of care and attention that Mary provides to our team truly empowers us as a team because she works with a level of professionalism and provides to us excellent work that we can trust.
• Aside from all that Mary does professionally, she is a wonderful human being, who cares about her colleagues and shows her care as an excellent listener, who cuts through all the “fluff,” and provides you with excellent advice. Whenever there’s something I’m concerned or worried about and I really need someone to be honest with me, I always go to Mary. I know that she will tell me like it is and even explain the reasoning behind her answer.
• Mary is literally the backbone of our cancer program and we would fall apart without her!

Congratulations, Mary!