I have been fortunate enough to have worked with so many different exceptional nurses in my career. However, Amy Phipps is the best nurse that I have ever worked with. From the standpoint of professional experience, she possesses a wealth of knowledge gained from her previous experience working as an inpatient nurse. She always provides safe and effective care. She’s never one to shy away from asking questions to make sure that the treatment plan is safe.

In addition to direct patient care, Amy Phipps also loves to provide patient education. Whenever we have a newly diagnosed diabetic patient, I can always count Amy to be the one to provide diabetic education. Besides my personal observation, many providers who have worked with Amy also commented that she’s always “[at work] early, last to leave…thinking about her team…kind to the patient, kind to everyone… [and] tenacious”. She’s also dubbed “Queen of TE (telephone encounter)”.

One of the providers did cite an example that illustrates this quality of Amy best as included below: “We all have times when we are handling the in basket, and we get into a situation we just cannot fix. There was one day, a Tuesday, when there was a leftover situation from the weekend. The patient had been seen on Friday and was probably miscarrying, HCG and RH type ordered but for some reason, the RH type appeared to be missing, perhaps not drawn. I spoke with Amy about it. She tracked down the situation and determined the lab did not have the right tube to run the test. Then she paged OB for me to discuss, and we learned the patient could not have this taken care of there. Then Amy spoke with lab and OB nurses and determined what would need to be done to get the RH back that day, since we were already >72 hours out from the office visit. Then we could not reach the patient. But Amy got back to me several times in the next few hours about this situation until we had reached the patient and settled on a solution. Meanwhile, we were both seeing patients, and she was triaging and rooming patients as usual.” Amy’s devotion to her patient has no limit.

One day, we had a patient checking into the clinic in the last fifteen minutes before closing time. The patient had urinary symptoms with vital signs that meet sepsis criteria. Instead of complaining or becoming irritated, Amy spent the time to get the pertinent information in a timely fashion before she came to me to give a report. We both agreed that patient needed to be managed in the hospital. However, the patient declined because the ER had a long wait time and there was a long delay with the admission process. Ultimately, we decided to hydrate and treat him with IV antibiotics. For the next two hours, Amy was busy helping the patient. Never once did the smile disappear from her face. Her voice remained as comforting as always. When the visit was done, the family thanked us both for the great care. I, in turn, thanked Amy and apologized for keeping her from her family for two hours past closing time. She just smiled and said, “Any time, Dr. T. The patient needed help and we are here to help.”

In short, Amy is an amazing nurse. She’s excellent at what she does. She cares for the patient greatly and would cry with them when they share their story with her. She supports her teammate to the best of her ability in order to keep the team running smoothly. I cannot think of a more deserving individual for the DAISY Award.