On Thursday, July 22nd, All Children’s Hospital honored our DAISY Award winners and nominees at a special recognition event in the Outpatient Care Center. The DAISY award is presented monthly to nurses who have provided extraordinary care, based upon patient, family, staff or physician comments submitted from BeACH and the GetWellNetwork. This year’s event included a presentation by special guest, Tena Barnes Carraher, Co-founder of The DAISY Foundation. Tena was the wife of J. Patrick Barnes, who died at age 33 of complications of the blood-clotting disorder, Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura.
Patrick’s family created the foundation in his memory in January 2000, focusing on the one positive thing they could hold onto from the experience of his eight-week illness – the skillful and amazingly compassionate care he received from his nurses. The DAISY Award For Extraordinary Nurses now recognizes the super-human work nurses do every day, all over the country. DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.
In addition to honoring the past year’s DAISY Award Winners and Nominees, the July DAISY Award was presented during the celebration to Kristen Kelly, R.N. Helping present the award was 8-year-old Aiden and his mother Lisa Hawk. Lisa nominated Kristen for her extraordinary nursing this past April, when Aiden developed sepsis due to a tear in his stomach lining. Lisa credits Kristen’s fast and skillful actions in administering IV antibiotics with saving Aiden’s life.
Aiden and his younger brother Mason, also an All Children’s patient, presented bouquets of daisies to this year’s award winners, following remarks from Arnie Stenberg, Executive VP & COO, and Hella Ewing, VP & CNO.
