Arlena is a deserving recipient of the DAISY Nurse Leader Award. Her leadership skills and the environment she creates foster caring behaviors, and she is a consistent role model for Memorial Hermann Hospital's core values, mission, and vision. As the clinical manager of both the PACU and PAT unit, she is always available to listen and willing to help out everywhere when needed. Arlena will step in and help care for patients at the bedside in PACU when staff is overwhelmed. She also follows patients throughout their hospitalization to make sure they are comfortable. She is dedicated to ensuring every patient and family member who comes to Memorial Hermann Katy receives the highest quality of care delivered with compassion, respect, and dignity. Arlena has worked for Memorial Hermann for many years. During her tenure she has fostered the trust and admiration of her teams. She is able to navigate emotionally challenging situations by working collaboratively on solutions. She consistently advocates for her team and, at the same time, holds everyone accountable. Her calm, approachable demeanor, along with her willingness to take on difficult issues, has led to a clear shift in culture in the units. The atmosphere of cooperation, dedication, and collegiality is in large part due to her leadership. Arlena is actively involved in nursing congress at Katy Hospital while also encouraging growth of staff. For her personal growth, she is pursuing a Master’s Degree and actively involved in the National and Local chapter of the AACN. She worked tirelessly and played a vital role in Katy's receiving our first-ever Magnet Designation. Arlena empowers her teams and fosters leadership skills by appropriately addressing patient safety and quality improvement projects and initiatives. She has established open relationships with her teams, which makes it comfortable to bring up concerns to her. Her dedication, skillful leadership, and compassion for patients and her colleagues are a true asset to our hospital. Arlena serves as a role model of extraordinary behavior and leadership, which promotes and enhances the image of nursing within the organization, the community, and the profession. She embodies the essence and spirit of the DAISY Leader Award and deserves recognition for the impact she has had on her team and the community.

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This nomination is way overdue. Arlena deserves this award for exemplary leadership. She is very supportive of her staff. When PACU is overwhelmed, Arlena always jumps in to help at the bedside. In fact, if anything is going on with your patient, she is at the bedside right away, helping the nurse with any issues. For an instance, one of the patients had bleeding post surgery. Arlena came to the bedside, called the surgeon, and communicated with the MD. As staff nurses,it is a big thing for us to have support, especially in times like this, as this incident can be overwhelming for the staff. On top of that, Arlena always values staff concerns like staffing, always making sure her unit is fully staffed. She definitely deserves this award for being an extraordinary leader.

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Arlena was one of the most amazing leaders to work with and get to know. Throughout the entire year, it is clear that Arlena has a passion for patients and her team. It is so rare to have a leader like Arlena. She always has a huge smile on her face and a can-do attitude. She works at all hours (PM) and days (Sat/Sun) to support her staff. She even takes patients when her staff has a full workload. How she can manage to take patients and handle her leadership duties is unbelievable! Arlena is the definition of be the difference at Katy. She shows dedication to her team and strives for constant professional development, as evidenced by her current enrollment in her MSN program. She takes on new challenges with a positive attitude such as the increase in neurosurgical acuity patients. Arlena supports not only her staff but also other leaders. She covers PACU and Pre-Admit, but constantly supports ACU and Endoscopy. It is obvious all staff adore and respect her! Arlena is also highly involved in Magnet and her Nursing practice Environment Council. She constantly shows support, shares knowledge, and encourages the members to grow. I absolutely enjoy working with Arlena, and I am blessed to know her as a nurse and a leader!