... Susan is one of the RN Supervisors for the Pediatric Clinic. She is known among the staff as a hard worker and always willing to help when she is needed. Our families appreciate her knowledge and her desire to help them in any way possible. There are so many examples I could provide of how Susan demonstrates the attributes the DAISY Award wishes to acknowledge but the following email from a grateful family says it all. A mother, emailed me directly regarding the care her son received from Susan Sanchez and gave her permission for me to use it for this nomination. She wrote:

My son, is a regular at UNM. He has Severe Hemophilia A with an inhibitor and he has an extreme fear of needles so accessing his port has become more of a challenge for my husband and me over the past couple of years. For a while we needed a break and would bring him in once a week to the unit to get accessed. We have been through it all with accessing: holding him down, dealing with his fear and tears and screams and even having to step back because our emotions get the best of us at times.

I brought my son in one morning for a "routine" access and I had already gotten myself prepared for the battle and something pretty amazing happened. Susan came in to infuse him and before she did anything, she sat down and talked to him, not me, him. She would not even think about getting supplies ready until he had listened to her and conversed with her. They made a deal that nothing would happen unless he knew about it ahead of time. Every nurse on the unit has been amazing to work with but that day in particular, Susan took the extra time and met him right where he was.

When you have a child with a chronic condition you become immune to many things and you function on auto pilot quite a bit. But that morning she broke through not just to my son but to me. She helped me step outside of the normal "yuck" that we go through to treat him and helped me remember that his is a little boy who is scared and tired.

I cannot say enough about the nurses on the unit and on the 6th floor. We know them all well and are so fortunate that while we have to live with hemophilia, we can always depend on the faces at UNM.

I am grateful for nurses like Susan who remember that the little boys and girls they are seeing are not "one time visitors". They help them make their lives a little more bearable by their presence.

All the best from a very grateful Mama.