Tiffany is one of the most skilled and compassionate nurses that I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Tiffany has worked in Labor and Delivery for over 12 years, and she is dedicated to improving her knowledge base and excellent patient care. Tiffany also has her obstetrical nursing specialty certification and maintains this by doing extra education outside of her scheduled work hours. It is easy to see how much passion is in the work she does just by how much she goes out of her way to help provide the best services and care to her patients. In addition to providing great clinical care, Tiffany has a personal love of photography. Recently, she has offered on a volunteer basis to be an on-call photographer for patients with a fetal death or fetal palliative care in order to provide families with beautiful memories of their child.

I am nominating Tiffany because of interactions she had with a few patients and their families last week. Recently on our unit there have been some deliveries where fetal prognosis was poor and parents were anticipating palliative cares only. Tiffany, with her love and passion for photography, offered to be on-call on her day off and come in when these patients delivered to take photographs for the families. In the last week, she has come in four separate days on her days off to take photos of babies and their families. She not only uses her time on a volunteer basis, but she uses all her own personal equipment, camera, and props to provide the best lighting, scene, and memory for the family. Tiffany also uses her personal computer to burn a disk with all photos to give to families after the session.

One particular case last week that stands out is when Tiffany came in for a family who knew that their child would have palliative care from the moment of birth and so badly wanted to have family photos taken with their child while he was still alive. Tiffany was updated throughout the day on when the patient was going to deliver and made sure she was there at the time of birth. She was able to get beautiful photographs of the family with their child which they were so thankful for. The family proceeded to tell their primary nurse after the photographs were done and they received the disk, that this was a huge part of the healing process for them. They wondered how to ever repay the nurse who came in and volunteered her time. This same week Tiffany came in three additional times to take photographs for families and even offered to mail the disk with photos on it to the patient at home because she was being discharged prior to the disk being completely burned and ready for her.

Among all the clinical excellence Tiffany demonstrates here at work she also demonstrates her compassion and commitment to providing the best care to patients and their families. This past week Tiffany went above and beyond to coordinate the photographing for these families and made sure that they received the best memories possible and could start their healing process. A photograph is one of the only tangible memories that a parent gets to take home after their baby passes away, which is why Tiffany offered her talent and love of photography to these families.

Tiffany really truly deserves to be recognized for all the hard work and dedication she has for patients and their families. When a person offers their own personal time to come in and provide a service to benefit others it is truly selfless.