Mary
Clark
March 2012
Mary
Clark
,
RN
ED
Atrium Health - University City
Charlotte
,
NC
United States

 

 

 

I would like to nominate Mary Clark from the Emergency Department for a DAISY Award. Mary did an excellent job while in charge in the ED Saturday, October 22, 2011. She always demonstrates a sense of calmness when she is in charge but did a particularly good job this night. The ED was really busy, they had gotten several respiratory distress patients via medic in a short span of time. Additionally they had gotten two more psychiatric patients around the same time frame. One of the psych patients was very agitated and had the potential to get very combative with the staff. I was working as house supervisor this night and happened to be in the ED so I offered to go into the room with Mary to medicate the patient with IM medications for his agitation. He did not want the medication and asked a lot of questions about the meds. Mary talked to the MD for him, printed out an information sheet on the meds (per his request), read the information to him when he did not have his reading glasses, etc. She went above and beyond in helping him to explore other options. When he ultimately needed the medication and did not want to take it, Mary did an excellent job if verbally de-escalating the patient. He did not have to be restrained and calmly allowed Mary to medicate him. This patient has been in the ER with similar issues in the past and had to be physically restrained by multiple staff members. The situation could have gone very differently had Mary not calmly dealt with the patient in the way that she did. She demonstrated utmost concern for the safety of the patient, staff and other patients in the department.