Primerose Etienne
April 2016
Primerose
Etienne
,
RN
Telemetry
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital
Santa Rosa
,
CA
United States

 

 

 

We rarely see Primerose at the nurse's station because she spends nearly every minute of her day with her patients. No patient goes without a bath when she is their nurse. She changes every patient's sheets, tidies every room, and tends to their every concern. The only time she can be found at the nurse's station is when she is printing out volumes of education material or discharge papers. While all of these things are expected of every nurse every day, we all know it is rare to be able to accomplish it all, let alone each and every shift. Primerose is that rare nurse that does little things to go above and beyond.
Recently I was lead on day shift. The housekeeper approached me and told me that her prescription glasses had disappeared from on top of her cart. She suspected a particular patient's family member of taking them. She wasn't sure how to approach the situation and desperately needed her glasses back. I wandered into the room on the pretense of making rounds and casually looked around, not seeing any glasses. Primerose went into the room a few minutes later, opened the closet and found the glasses sitting on top of the patient's clothing. She asked if the glasses were the patient's and received a non-committal answer. She then asked the housekeeper if she wouldn't mind going into the room and thanking the people for finding her glasses. The housekeeper went in and thanked them profusely. The patient's husband awkwardly told her she was welcome and that was the end of that.
Primerose found a clever way to preserve the patient's dignity and defuse a potentially difficult situation. She is truly amazing.