Jaxon works as a stepdown nurse for the hospital float pool and is appreciated everywhere he goes. For us, needing nurses who are ventilator trained, he is a godsend. He shows up to our unit, as he is often allocated here, with a smile and ready to be a part of this team. If you were from the outside looking in, you would think he was just a part of our core team because of how he adapts to our unit and patient population.

Right now, we have a patient who has been with us for eight months. This patient was critically ill when they arrived at UAB and did not have an immediately good prognosis. To say they are an interdisciplinary success is the understatement of the century. This patient is young and has spent the last few years of their life bedbound. We rarely see family or friends visiting. We are their entire support system and have been overjoyed to watch them wean off the ventilator and get out of bed for the first time in years. Their progress has been hard-fought and hard-won. The one lifeline and connection this patient has to the outside world is their tablet. They are immersed in video games and Japanese anime. Staff have jumped into this with them and have found it has been what has brought the patient out of their shell and has begun to want to be present and alive again. We have twice in eight months required extra help caring for this patient when they could see no way out. To say his tablet keeps him sane would be a gross understatement of its value.

One evening, the tablet was accidentally knocked off the patient's bedside table and broke. This was over the weekend, and there was a plan with unit leadership to replace it on Monday morning. Monday morning was not soon enough for Jaxon. He recognizes more than just a patient. He sees the person. Every single one of his patients benefits from this. It is not the first time he has gone above and beyond to provide for a patient or family member. Jaxon left his night shift, went to the store, and purchased a new tablet out of his own money to bring back to the patient the very next night shift. He has since refused for anyone to give money for the purchase and is only worried that if we do not get a longer charging cable, it may happen again.

Jaxon is a phenomenal clinician. He is often assigned to some of the sickest patients on the unit because we know he can handle it and that the patient will get the best care. This, in combination with his innate ability to see the human being in that bed, makes him so rare. He sees the pain and the struggle of his patients through more than just a nursing lens, and we are all better for it. What he brings to his patients and their families is comfort beyond medicine. What he brings to the teams he is working with is peace. We know that when Jaxon is here, everyone around him will be supported. He is a gem, and truly deserves to be recognized for this, and what I know is not the first or last time that he will go above and beyond.