Danielle Grabinski

I am nominating a young nurse educator for the DAISY Award.  I mention young, because I am always astonished how someone her age has the capacity for such depth of maturity and consistently shines every day as an evolving leader on our unit.

Danielle is 100% engaged in her commitment to assisting our staff with all that is expected to maintain high quality, patient and family focused care. We experience daily challenges to apply new evidence-based standards of care in our clinical practice, but  she does this with ease.

Today her Vocera was glowing as nurses paged her with questions related to competency exams.  She reassures everyone that she will go over whatever teaching needs they have.  The official competency day is tomorrow.  I know that Danielle will be up late tonight, partially excited about tomorrow and partially worried because maybe one test is a little too hard.  It doesn’t matter, because in the end, her subjects will get it, because she will make it her mission.

The beautiful part is that each parent who witnesses her caring for their little ones and each patient who she touches is comforted by an extraordinary nurse. Her living example of leadership witnessed by her peers inspires them to be a better version of themselves. Did you ever meet a nurse who, whenever she is on duty, everyone else seems to have a great day….a nurse who smiles all the time and whom people smile back at?  Danielle is a nurse whom everyone readily comments, “We are so lucky to have her”.  That is a nurse.  Danielle is awesome!

Danielle was extremely helpful and went out of her way to assist a physician and patient a few weeks ago. We have a brand new pediatric rheumatologist who does not have a nurse working with her yet. She has been trying to find her way here and we all know what a huge place Morristown Memorial Hospital is. This particular day, this new MD had an outpatient who was a child who needed an arthrocentesis under anesthesia. This was being done in the xray department. The doctor needed IV cortisone and had to go to pharmacy to pick it up herself. She also needed supplies that she had to gather and was quite frazzled by the time she got to the patient. She called upstairs to the peds department to see if she could get a nurse to come to the radiology department to help her with the procedure and Danielle immediately responded. She didn’t waste a minute and went right downstairs to facilitate so that the procedure went smoothly for the patient, family and physician.

She demonstrated true leadership and role modeled exemplary professional responsibility to her team.  This was outside of her responsibility and demonstrated extraordinary care and support for our patients and families. But this is not outside what Danielle would do on a normal day. She always goes above and beyond and she is truly deserving of this award.