Stephanie Decker deserves the DAISY Award as she is an extraordinary nurse. She worked on 1W as a staff nurse, she showed compassion for all her patients and their families. Always providing a bright smile and a cheery greeting though their stay may not have been pleasant, she always took the extra step to make sure her patients and their families were taken care of. As a certified diabetic nurse, she took on a project with one of the hospitalists to improve the way our facility delivered inpatient diabetic care. Working with updating the sliding scale orders and other basic order sets for insulin administration. She ensured patients and families were getting known best practice care. She then worked with the staff to implement, doing all the teaching for the nursing staff when the new process went live, coming in and covering all shifts and acting as a subject matter expert as needed. She collaborated with pharmacy, physicians, diabetic outpatient nurse, the CACs, nursing administration and nursing staff to complete this project. The overall goal for this project was to improve glucose control in the hospital for patients with insulin dependent diabetes, so they can heal faster with less potential for complications. She brought to our facility evidence based best practices she used as a certified diabetic nurse prior to coming to our facility. In addition she was able to engage the staff to accept and participate in changing practice in a supportive and well planned out manner. When not everything went as planned, she listened and was able to mentor and bring everyone up to the same level of practice.

Stephanie actually moved to another position with CCHT several months and is no longer an inpatient medical surgical staff nurse but did not give up on her inpatient diabetic management goals. She continued to work on inpatient diabetic management, working on meal associated insulin administration which required a change in practice of many disciplines. She worked with nursing again as well as nutrition and food services, pharmacy, physicians, and the CACs. The project is almost at the end point but I doubt Ms. Decker will abandon ship. Since coming to WRJ VAMC Ms. Decker has helped WRJ VAMC meet it mission of providing exceptional healthcare that improves Veteran's health and wellbeing.