I was recently visiting a patient who spoke English as a second language. It was a very challenging situation as the patient had severe confusion and debilitation and was only around 50 years old. She had a complex medical history and was on dialysis in addition to the issues that she was currently experiencing, which came out of nowhere. During her periods of confusion, she would at times become aggressive and has become very challenging for the staff to care for. 

I went to the unit one day to check on the staff and to see how the patient was doing to see if we were making any progress on hopefully getting her home. The patient was very drowsy and unable to communicate, eat, or really get out of bed on her own without significant assistance. At this point, she was no longer aggressive, but the teams were leery of her. 

As I was visiting, a young man showed up in the doorway who had scrubs on and appeared to be coming to work. I asked if he was there to take care of the patient, and he said no, he was just visiting. I asked if he knew the patient from the community and was visiting her as a friend.  He let me know that in fact, he met the patient while she was in dialysis and discovered that she was from a similar country that he was from and they spoke the same language they were from different parts of Ghana, but close enough that they spoke similar dialect, and he was able to communicate with her in her native language.  I questioned again where he came from and why he was visiting the patient, and he let me know that he got to talking with her while she was in dialysis and that he was a new nurse in the dialysis unit. He realized that she did better when speaking in her native language and so he had been coming to visit her when he got off work from his shift just to check in and see how she was doing. 

The patient immediately perked up when he came into the room, she was touching him on the arm and clearly felt very secure with his presence in the room. They were chatting back-and-forth when one moment earlier she had barely been able to lift her head up off the pillow. 

I heard him call her T, and I asked if that was her name because we were calling her something different, and he said that was a nickname for her. That’s what her friends and family would call her, so we were able to make the change on her whiteboard to let people know that a more familiar name for the patient was T. 

Again, this was a young nurse, a young man who had not worked at the health system for all that long, and I was so impressed to see that he had taken time after his shift to come and visit a patient whom he had met only a few days earlier in the dialysis unit.  The way the patient responded to someone who could speak her language was unbelievable. He was so kind to her and so gentle with her that I could not help but think that I was watching a DAISY Nurse in action.