Michelle embodies the qualities of an extraordinary nurse. She has a superb knowledge base, great common sense, and a keen clinical eye and judgment. Not only does she manage the symptoms and side effects of cancer therapy well, but she also has an astute eye for serious problems. She has saved a number of lives in her service to patients in our department through careful observational skills when a patient comes down the hall into our clinic. She has rapidly picked up serious problems unrelated to their radiation treatments including pulmonary emboli, myocardial infarcts, strokes as well as a myriad of other less imminently threatening problems.
Michelle is empathetic, compassionate, caring, accountable and a methodical and a thorough relevant questioner and a superb listener. On some joint visits when I am feeling the need to move along, she never shorts on pursuing all the relevant issues with the patients. She is an ultimate patient advocate and addresses patients' needs so well that she is often the first person to be called if a patient has an issue, often before a call to their primary care provider, as the patient knows that Michelle can handle many issues and will expertly redirect if not.
Michelle is warm, kind and pleasant to all patients. She provides superb and thorough education to patients and their families and caregivers early on in the treatment process. Despite her broad knowledge, she always seeks to understand the plan before she embarks on the educational visits.
Our team in Radiation Oncology is made up of patient care and service superstars and Michelle is consistently providing that exceptional level of service and attention. Patients and families uniformly value the quality of their relationships with her and understand well what she brings to their care, experience and outcome.
These superb qualities are not new. I have had the pleasure of working with Michelle for 21 years and she exhibited each of these on her first day to work at Evergreen. She also has been recognized appropriately before in the first class of Nursing Excellence Awardees.
It is with pleasure, privilege and years of first-hand clinical experience working together that I nominate Michelle Trygg to be a recipient of the DAISY Award. She absolutely defines and embodies nursing excellence.