I am happy to nominate the amazing team on Transitional Trauma Unit (now encompassing 2 units on 5A and 5B) for the DAISY Team Award. There is a quote that, “It takes a village to take care for a child” and the same goes for a critically ill trauma patient. This particular patient was injured and had a traumatic brain injury leaving her with a tracheostomy, PEG tube, and minimal neurological function, and only in her early 20s. Unfortunately, her family lived far away, and there were insurance coverage issues that left her on our unit for months without any visitors. Our TTU team took it upon themselves to ensure this young adult had exceptional care every single day and night she was here. She never developed a pressure injury despite having several weeks of large amounts of liquid stools due to a feeding tube malfunction. Our nurses and patient care partners ensured she had her long, beautiful hair combed and braided; her nails painted. Even her eyebrows were shaped by one of our nurses, so she didn’t have a “unibrow”. It is truly the essence of nursing to preserve a patient’s dignity in the worst times of their life. 

This young girl had no one visiting her and our staff took it upon themselves to adopt her as a part of our TTU family. Our case manager had numerous conversations to help assist this patient’s family from afar who was suffering from mental illness due to processing the grief relating to their loved one’s injuries. It was a bittersweet day for us when this patient finally was accepted to a long-term care facility, because our staff were concerned about how well she would be taken care of there. This isn’t the only time TTU treated a patient like this, and it certainly won’t be the last. It is tough to provide such time-intensive care when it is so busy, yet our staff always ensures that patients get treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. Our staff truly embodies the LVHN mission “to heal, comfort, and care”.

In addition to providing exceptional patient care, our nurses are very involved in advancing our evidence-based nursing care practice. We have several RNs on hospital-wide shared governance councils including The Fall Quality Improvement Team (2 RNs), Skin Integrity Council (2 RNs), Patient Experience Council, RN Engagement Council, and Annual Trauma Conference planning committee. In addition, we had 2 RNs complete an EBP Project through the yearlong AACN CSI Academy offered at LVHN, and they are presenting their poster on Utilization of a Frailty Score for Geriatric Trauma Patients at the Society of Trauma Nurse’s Trauma Conference in Denver this March. In 2021, another team of nurses presented their Nurse Residency EBP project at 2 national nursing conferences— The Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses Conference and Society of Trauma Nurses Conference. We also had a staff nurse attend the National Magnet Conference this Fall. 2 of our bedside nursing have completed MSN degrees and 2 are enrolled in MSN programs, this encompasses >20% of our bedside nurses.

Another great project that our TTU nurses on our Performance Improvement Council developed is an educational video to show nurses how to set up Buck’s Traction, a complicated setup that is often a struggle for nurses that don’t see it all the time. This project has been recently filmed in our simulation lab and it is currently being edited to upload into TLC as a reference for all LVHN hospital sites across the network.

I am proud to be the Patient Care Specialist of such an amazing team of care providers, and I think TTU is most deserving of The DAISY Team Award. It is also a testament to our unit that several of our nurses and technical partners have been nominated for and won Friends of Nursing awards. I have worked on TTU for the past 10 years ever since becoming a nurse and have always felt it is an amazing place to work because of the incredible team of colleagues we have there.