Megan Fretwell, BSN, RN

I would like to nominate Megan Fretwell, RN at Gretna PACE, for a DAISY Award. She stepped up and really helped our Gretna PACE participants and team. Megan is a Home Care RN on our Gretna PACE team. She is an amazing nurse and consistently goes above and beyond to care for our Gretna PACE participants and the Gretna PACE team. In Megan’s current role, she rarely comes into the Gretna PACE building. She focuses on participants and how they are doing in their homes, as well as supporting them at different levels of care, including hospitalization and nursing home placement. Right now, Gretna PACE has an unusually high number of participants in nursing homes and assisted living, and Megan spends most of her time there. The process of coordinating care for our PACE participants in nursing homes and assisted living is very time-consuming and complex. She always does an amazing job communicating any changes or needs back to the Gretna PACE Interdisciplinary Team, and she is always an advocate for our participants. She is a very busy woman, and her days are always packed! She is constantly on the run, helping take care of our PACE participants!

In June 2026, the clinic at Gretna PACE was struggling. The “Perfect Storm” occurred with staffing, and we did not have a Provider on site. Additionally, all three of our clinic nurses needed to be off— one nurse was on vacation, another had a death in the family, and the third nurse had a major family emergency. This left no clinic nurse in the building to care for participants. The PACE team thought we had everything figured out and it would be OK for the PACE participants to attend the center, but the clinic would be closed for the day. Megan volunteered to quickly come into the Gretna PACE building to see two participants who needed wound care, then leave to go back out into the community. But, as with Murphy’s Law, everything fell apart once the participants started arriving at our Gretna PACE site.

In addition to the two participants who needed wound care, someone came into the center with a skin tear that needed attention. This became time-consuming because the gentleman is pleasantly confused and loves to talk, making it difficult to get details from him. Then back-to-back phone calls started coming in from participants who needed to speak with a nurse. Megan quickly recognized the need for the clinic to have a nurse see participants and completely rearranged her day to be at PACE to support participant care. With Megan’s workload in the community, rearranging her entire day is not taken lightly, and it is not easy. She still needed to do the same work, which would only make her day more hectic. However, she saw a need and wanted to support the Gretna PACE participants and clinic team. She quickly and gladly rearranged her day to be at the PACE center to support participant care. The Gretna PACE team and participants are very grateful to have Megan on our team. She is a phenomenal nurse, a great teammate, and she has a huge heart for caring for the elderly. Thank you, Megan, for quickly recognizing a need and sacrificing your precious time to help the participants and staff at Gretna PACE.