1,264 HEALTHCARE FACILITIES ARE NOW COMMITTED TO THE DAISY AWARD! Click here for press release announcing 1,000
Contact: Bonnie Barnes
Co-founder, President, The DAISY Foundation
(707) 996-7936 or (707) 481-1600
bonniebarnes@DAISYfoundation.org
The DAISY Foundation Celebrates The 1,000th Healthcare Facility To Commit To Its DAISY Award For Extraordinary Nurses
December 9, 2011 (Glen Ellen, CA) - With two hospitals committing virtually simultaneously to participate in The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses, The DAISY Foundation announces there are now more than 1,000 healthcare facilities in 7 countries honoring their nurses throughout the year for their compassionate and skillful care of patients and families.
On December 9th, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center in Renton, WA, and Norton Audubon Hospital in Louisville, KY, joined as DAISY Partners, bringing total participation to 1,001. Said Bonnie Barnes, DAISY co-founder and President, “We are thrilled to reach this incredible milestone. It’s remarkable that we piloted our DAISY Award program in 1999 at the University of Washington’s Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, and one of our 1,000th programs is at UW Medicine’s newest facility.”
DAISY is an acronym for diseases attacking the immune system. The DAISY Award is an on-going recognition program in partnership with healthcare organizations that celebrates the extraordinary skill and compassion direct care nurses bring to their patients and families every day. It is one of three programs the Barnes Family created through The DAISY Foundation as a means of expressing their gratitude to the nursing profession for the outstanding care they experienced when J. Patrick Barnes was hospitalized for 8 weeks in 1999 with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura (ITP). Patrick died of complications of this auto-immune disease at age thirty-three. But the family was so touched by his nurses that they felt compelled to say thank you by publicly. Said Pat’s father, Mark Barnes and DAISY co-founder, “When we started the Foundation, we needed to express our gratitude to nurses and remind them of the tremendous impact they have on patients and their families. Nurses are incredible people, not only for the life-saving work they do but also for the acts of compassion and kindness that nurses do all the time without even thinking about it. We had no idea that The DAISY Award would be embraced by the nursing profession and healthcare organizations as it has been.”
Since the program’s inception in February, 2011, over 20,000 nurses have received this esteemed recognition and more than 120,000 nominations have been written, telling stories of the exceptional impact nurses have on the patient experience have been written by patients, families, and colleagues.
Recently concluded independent research into the impact of The DAISY Award on nurses and their organizations revealed the reasons why this program has been embedded in the cultures of so many healthcare facilities internationally. "The DAISY Award's ability to drive and shape organizational culture is just one of the benefits this study uncovered," said Cindy Lefton, PhD, RN, Vice President of Psychological Associates, who led the research team. "When we volunteered to undertake this work, we did not anticipate the profound meaning and impact this recognition has, as revealed by DAISY Honorees, Chief Nursing Officers, and the 2,200 DAISY nominations we analyzed."
In addition to running The DAISY Award, the Foundation introduced The DAISY Faculty Award in 2010, currently honoring nursing faculty in 60 schools/colleges of nursing. The Foundation also funds grants for nursing research and evidence-based practice projects through its J. Patrick Barnes Grants and helps disseminate study findings through its Lynne Doll Grants.
The DAISY Foundation is well supported by the nursing profession, with AONE (American Organization of Nurse Executives) collaborating on The DAISY Award and the American Nurses Credentialing Center, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, American Assembly of Men in Nurses, Sigma Theta Tau International, American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and the National League for Nursing all lending support to help the Foundation grow its programs.
The Foundation is also supported by National Sponsors Cinnabon, Cherokee Uniforms, GetWellNetwork, Hill-Rom, Kimberly-Clark Healthcare, and the Wells Fargo Foundation.
For more information, go to DAISYfoundation.org.
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