Cryssie Tino, MSN, RN, CNOR, CSSM
Director Perioperative Services, The Jewish Hospital
By Matt Skoufalos
Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cryssie Tino describes herself as a tomboy — which is another way to say she was active enough to sustain her share of injuries. After breaking the same arm for the third time, she remembers thinking that the physicians and nursing staff who cared for her had impressive jobs. A career in health care was always in the back of her mind, and Tino was always a good student, but she wasn’t sure initially whether she would be able to afford the cost of college.
“It was always financial constraints,” she said. “I was being realistic with what I could afford. There were some people who were getting different scholarships; I worked full-time the entire time I went to school for 13 years, nights and weekends.”
Tino enrolled in a surgical technologist program at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College because it was an affordable degree to attain. And after completing her clinical rounds at The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, Tino signed on as a surgical technologist upon graduating. She was assigned to the open heart team right out of college. Despite her apprehension about taking on the challenges inherent in the role, Tino placed her confidence in herself and her peers with whom she’d graduated.
“At my institution, a group of cohorts all worked together in the OR,” Tino said. “It was a good support system. The group mentality; the teamwork mentality. In the OR, you’re never in it alone. You always have at least a few other people there with you in the trenches. I knew my physicians, I knew my team, I knew my surroundings.”
After a while, things started to click, and Tino found her groove. While working at The Christ Hospital, she earned her RN diploma, began working as a scrub nurse, and started learning how to do spines and craniotomies. Along the way, she was offered the opportunity to pursue her BSN through the University of Cincinnati, and despite feeling like she had been done with school altogether after completing her RN, Tino doubled down, and took the opportunity to advance her career once more.
“When I graduated nursing school, I would have told you then that I was never going back to school again,” she said. “But there was another opportunity for a cohort of us to get our BSNs, and at that time I was like, ‘OK, I can do this.’ I started getting more into a leadership focus; I wanted to make a difference.”
Tino soon accepted a leadership position as an evening charge nurse enroute to a career that’s come to involve nearly every kind of nursing role in the perioperative setting — surgical tech, RN, educator, assistant manager, charge nurse, manager, director — and built her management style around cultivating young talent and working to preserve the team mentality in surgery.
“I entered into leadership quite quickly,” Tino said. “Within the first two years of being a nurse, I learned a ton about myself and how operations work: the things you don’t think of as a staff nurse, and how other people work and how you can influence the team mentality. I had a really good director whom I felt safe to ask questions of, and say how I felt.”
The same woman who was convinced she’d been done with school after her RN program not only went on to earn her BSN, but completed her master’s degree in nursing right afterwards. Tino credits a fantastic teacher in her BSN program who mentored her, speaking about the master’s program in a way that she said, “made me feel like I could do it.” Thereafter, she joined Mercy Health at its West Hospital campus, eventually transferring to The Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati; along the way, Tino earned her Certified Perioperative Nurse credential in 2012, as well as becoming part of the inaugural class of Certified Surgical Services Managers in 2015.
“After getting my CNOR, some publications were coming out about this new certification,” Tino said. “I was at an AORN leadership summit, and I said, ‘I can do this.’ It was something that I just set a goal for myself. To be part of the first batch of people in the world felt really good. From there I started doing some volunteer work – item writing, review – with the Competency and Credentialing Institute.”
At Mercy, Tino transitioned from assistant manager to manager, and then took on an assignment in sterile processing, which included oversight of the program. Two years later, the director of perioperative services at The Jewish Hospital urged her to consider taking on the role herself, and Tino accepted after taking some time to ask questions and learn about the assignment and what it entailed.
“I think all of it has been building blocks to get me where I am today,” she said. “I love all the experiences I have, even the tough ones; they’re the ones that make me stronger, and help me become a better leader. The leaders under me tell me that they like that I will solicit feedback from them and coach them through difficult conversations. You have to be OK with feedback yourself to want to hear it, and to grow. I love perioperative services.”
In October 2023, Tino will have been with Mercy Health for nine years, and an OR professional for 25 years. When she’s not at work, Tino and her husband Chris, run a drag racing series together. Their hot rod is a stock-appearing 2016 Ford Mustang S550, which was modified significantly for the track: its Built RGR Coyote engine gets a boost from an 88-mm turbocharger, Holley Dominator EFI, an Extreme Automatics turbo 400 transmission, 8.50 cert chassis and a parachute. All this yields low-8-second quarter-mile times at more than 172 miles per hour.
Away from work,Cryssie and her husband Chris, run a drag racing series together. Their hot rod is a stock-appearing 2016 Ford Mustang S550, which was modified significantly for the track.
Chris is the driver, and Cryssie works in the pit crew, building on skills she learned from her father, who insisted that she and her sister learn how to maintain their cars before they earned their licenses. For a couple whose first date was to the racetrack, it seems fated that they should be running together there.
“We’ve been in Norwalk, Florida, Michigan, South Carolina,” Cryssie Tino said. “It’s a lot of fun. It’s busy on weekends.”
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