I am excited to be able to nominate Dianne Wannschaff for the DAISY Award. For the last 10 years, she has been our clinical manager. She recently made the decision to return to direct nursing care and when she told me, all I could think of was how lucky our patients would be and how our staff will be able to learn from the best! Dianne is probably the best nurse I have ever seen in action. I was lucky to learn from her and she always pushed me toward excellence.
I had the opportunity to go to Haiti with Dianne on a medical mission trip, and in that time I witnessed her in her glory. She had an entire tent full of patients needing wound care and bowel, bladder training, medication management, and other nursing care.
One day while standing in line for food, she saw a bedside commode in a pile of equipment and quickly jumped out of line to grab it for one of her patients. He was a new paraplegic and she was working with him on a bowel program. That patient told her, "When you fly, I die," because he knew he was in good hands and dreaded that she would leave him.
Dianne took incredible care of all her patients in the tent and worked harder than anybody I have ever seen. She is always a step ahead of her patients, keeps them safe, comfortable and well cared for. She works hard, shares knowledge is a wonderful teacher and has an amazing work ethic. She adds so much to our team and we are lucky to have her on our unit.