A Heartfelt Adventure

Mary Dellinger, RN, BSN, ANP, CRNFA
Cardiac Vascular Operating Room

Mary Dellinger, RN, BSN, ANP, CRNFA, remembers being a certified registered nurse first assistant in the operating room when the D.C. area’s first heart transplant took place at Inova 30 years ago. That patient is currently one of only a handful of heart transplant patients in the country who have lived 30 years or more.

“She was a young mother at the time and many of us were young mothers, so it really hit home,” Dellinger recalls. “When we put in the new heart and you could actually see it beating, that was very rewarding. I wanted to start clapping; it was just so amazing.”

Moments like the one Dellinger experienced that day are what have made her nursing career a meaningful one. She joined the cardiac surgery team at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus just a year after it got off the ground. Having trained at the University of Virginia in cardiac surgery, she came to Inova with a tremendous amount of experience that served her well in the operating room.

Over the last three decades, Dellinger has worked with the Heart/Lung Transplant Program, the Ventricular Assist Device Program, and she now specializes in pediatric heart surgery in the Cardiac Vascular Operating Room (CVOR). She takes care of children with congenital heart defects as well as adults who need a revision to a previous surgery.

“I’m working with a patient population that includes babies who are one day old to adults in their 90s,” she says. “There’s a lot of variety in the CVOR, never a dull moment and always new techniques and procedures coming through the door.”

Although her schedule is often grueling, Dellinger wouldn’t change it for the world. Typically, she starts her day at 6 a.m. and goes home at 7:30 p.m. On her on-call nights, if there is an emergency or a transplant, she may work overnight.

Although Dellinger could move into management (she has served as interim director of the CVOR several times), her greatest joy is taking care of patients and helping them get back to their normal, active lives. “When emergent patients come in with surgical cardiac interventions, we basically save them and they walk out of the hospital. That’s very rewarding,” she says.

Learn more about Northern Virginia nursing job opportunities at Inova