May 2024
Eula
Cooper
,
MSN, BSN, RN-BC
Child/Adolescent Psychiatry
Sutter Center for Psychiatry
Sacramento
,
CA
United States
Eula immediately focused on gaining trust with this child by introducing herself, letting him know she was there to take care of him, approaching him in a casual manner without intense eye contact, and getting down to his level on her knees to speak with him.
Eula carries herself as a leader and example to others in our workplace. I remember a time when we admitted a child with special needs who required substantial support. He came to our hospital for being a danger to himself and a danger to others. Eula took the assignment and cared for him for many different days. His disability made caring for him more complex, challenging, and, at times, much more difficult to manage. During this child’s stay, Eula implemented a great example of evidence-based practice by the use of antecedent-based intervention. This type of intervention uses preferred activities or items to increase interest levels and subsequently reduce undesirable negative behaviors. This can be achieved by implementing activities before the target intervention, offering reasonable choices, changing the manner in which instruction is provided, and enhancing the environment so the learner can access tactile stimuli that serve the same functions as the undesirable behavior. Eula immediately focused on gaining trust with this child by introducing herself, letting him know she was there to take care of him, approaching him in a casual manner without intense eye contact, and getting down to his level on her knees to speak with him. She quickly found out what things he enjoyed doing, like coloring, squeezing things, collecting papers, and having snack time. Eula educated and instructed staff on how to front-load the child before each activity and when/how to introduce desirable activities when he displayed negative behaviors without those interventions being viewed by the patient as a reward for the negative behaviors. Needless to say, there were definitely challenging days with this patient. On one particular day, he was triggered, and he started to totally demolish his room. Several staff tried to de-escalate this patient with no success. It could easily have led to him being a danger to others or evolved into him self-harming. But when Eula came into the room, the whole dynamic changed because of the relationship she had built with this patient. The next thing we knew, she was sitting on the floor coloring with him. It was like magic! I know Eula engages with her patients like this for therapeutic rapport, but as staff, we can always trust Eula to do what is right for her patients. Maybe for Eula this is just a part of her job, but it is clear to us this is a job she loves, and it shows when a patient is able to learn to better manage their feelings and have a positive experience at our hospital. With all this said, I think Eula is a true DAISY Nurse.