Nurse of the Year: Anwar Duensing

On a recent flight home from a nurse education program in New Orleans, Anwar Duensing met two young women en route to Monterey for a friend’s wedding. When they told her they had no place to stay, she took them home. The next morning, she took them for a run on the recreation trail flanking the coastline.

The only thing Duensing likes better than running and, perhaps, cooking, is taking care of people. It’s an opportunity she seeks in every aspect of her life, particularly at Community Hospital, where she has been an ICU nurse for 24 years.

“I love my patients,” she says. “And I love the people I work with. All of them.”

That passion has translated into Duensing being named the hospital’s Nurse of the Year. Duensing is not only passionate, she’s proactive. “Each day, I ask, ‘What can go wrong with this ICU patient I have?’ To that answer I say, ‘No, I will address that before it happens.’ It’s important to anticipate needs and problems so they don’t arise. I treat patients like my family.”

Born and raised in Iran, Duensing earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Tehran before going to work for a 1,000-bed hospital in Tehran. She worked in the emergency room, but if a member of the royal family arrived she was in charge of their care.

“Once, when the Shah’s sister’s son came to the hospital,” she says, “I didn’t recognize him. Afraid I would disappear and my family would be in trouble, I went to a little hospital near my house, the U.S. Army Hospital in Tehran, and asked to work there.”

Duensing fell in love with her husband, an Army nurse from California, the day she met him at the hospital. He proposed marriage a month later, but she told him she’d have to investigate his homeland first.

“I came to the United States by myself,” she says. “I saw Colorado, New Mexico, and California, and I liked it so much I went back and married him.”

Their first son was born in Iran. When he was 6 months old, they were transferred to Texas, followed by a three-year assignment in Hawaii, where Duensing worked at Queen Medical Center and where their second son was born. In 1981, they were transferred to Monterey, where she interviewed at Community Hospital. She was hired the next day and has worked in ICU since then.

“I think it’s the best hospital,” she says. “I travel a lot of places for education, and I’ve talked to a lot of people. There is no better place for patient care.”

Congratulations to all of Community Hospital’s Nurse of the Year nominees. These nurses, nominated and recognized by their peers, demonstrate exceptional clinical skills and unwavering compassion. They are our daily heroes.

The 2005 nominees (left to right): Laura Loop, Alene Mazzuca, Fabrice Rondia, Cindy Thomas, Doug Anderson, Tonna Glass, Yolonde Johnson-Kemp, Anwar Duensing (Nurse of the Year), Betty Bischoff, Jean Tierney, Brenda Dawson, Bertha Birner, Julia Taylor, Kim Wright, and Theresa Garnero.