Shana consistently exemplifies all of the characteristics listed to describe a DAISY Nurse. However, she recently went above and beyond in a particular situation, which led to likely life-saving outcomes for her patient. On a particularly busy night, Shana managed to pay particularly close attention to a patient's complaints and minor changes on exam from the previous shift on an otherwise stable patient who was scheduled to be discharged home the following morning. She took the time to listen to the patient's complaints and researched the chart to see what had been said or done about the complaint and how it had changed from the previous shift's assessment.

Shana gathered this information and presented it clearly and with sincere concern, which alone promotes better outcomes when contacting an on-call provider overnight who is unfamiliar with the patient. She further advocated for the patient by requesting the patient be seen. This particular concern is no one that would generally warrant a provider going to examine a patient overnight, however because I am familiar with her excellent clinical judgement and nursing skills, her concern was reason enough to see the patient as requested.

This led to further testing that was done immediately and led to a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition. Since the patient had only developed early, minimal clinical manifestations at the time, he would have likely been discharged home as planned, and more likely than not would have suffered fatal or near-fatal outcomes in a very short period of time. Instead, due to this nurse's excellent clinical judgement and patient advocacy, further treatment was done in-house, and proper treatment was initiated.

Note: This is Shana's 2nd DAISY Award!