I want to nominate Deanne Smart for the DAISY Award. Dee works in the Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Infusion Center. Dee came to us after working in management and decided she wanted to go back to patient care. Dee has been an asset to us here in PONC and the patients we serve as she exemplifies our values in the following few examples.

Teamwork: Dee works extremely well with the infusion team, physicians, her patients, and their parents. When Dee is working as the relief Team Leader, she can be counted on to remain calm in all situations and this trickles down to the team. Short staffed? No complaints. Too many patients? No complaints. Difficult situations? No complaints. Dee has never been one to complain but she will step forward with suggestions for improvement. Dee was the team lead on a day when we were exceptionally short. She said all we can do is our best to get these kids in and cared for. At the end of the day, a nurse commented “As long as Dee is calm, I stay calm”. This is the type of leader Dee is.

Integrity: Dee can be counted on to speak the truth about any situation. If a mistake happens, she will own it. If she has committed to completing some work, she can be relied on to get the task done. She provides education to her patients on their development level and is very honest with her patients. Open and honest communication can be counted on when interacting with her patients. Dee can be counted on to have difficult conversations, always having the patient’s best interest as the focus.

Compassion: Recently we had a patient die here in the clinic. This was completely unexpected. Dee was part of the team performing CPR on the patient. Dee’s strength in leadership shined through this extremely sad situation. After the patient was declared deceased, Dee showed a great deal of compassion to the baby, the baby’s father, and her team. Days such as this are difficult, but it is comforting for us to know that everything we could do here was done for the baby. Dee took the time to check in with her peers to make sure they were doing ok after this event.

Wholeness: PONC had our initiation into hiring RN residents. We had two RN residents that were precepted by two very experienced nurses. One of the residents was very successful. The other RN resident had some challenges. To resolve some of the issues, I changed her to a new preceptor, and this was Dee. Dee accepted the challenge and wanted to work with the RN resident and help her develop a level of confidence and success. Dee was patient, kind, compassionate, and direct with all the many challenges that were presented. Dee and the resident worked together caring for the patients. Dee modeled excellent nursing behavior for the RN resident. She used all the tools to help with the success of this RN resident. There was open dialogue, education, reinforced teaching, consideration of the resident's learning style, reviewing the priorities of each patient, encouraging independence, redirecting when things were not done correctly, and celebrating the successes when things were done right. The resident had an extended training time as we all wanted her to be successful. The resident did learn to build a great rapport with her patients. Throughout this entire preceptor time, Dee remained open-minded, changed her teaching style to meet the needs of the resident, never complained, and continued to make suggestions to help the resident be successful. Although it was determined this area was not to be the right fit for the resident, I can confidently say Dee did everything she could to help develop this nurse. Dee is an asset to this clinic, our patients, and her infusion team. On her days off you can find her working in our ER, taking her experience and expertise there when she picks up extra shifts.