A few months ago, I met Zachary Rega, RN. Our paths haven't crossed since then, but I was really struck by the single interaction I had with him. On that day, I received a phone call asking me to assess a patient's healing burn. The patient had been followed by the Burn Team at another hospital, and was improving. This kiddo was making steady progress and nursing was performing daily dressing changes for him. While all the nurses who cared for him were treating the burn and managing dressing changes extremely well, it was Zachary who called me to ask if we could move forward toward smaller bandages or possibly remove them. He recognized that for this busy kiddo, we needed to balance our own inclination to keep the wound covered until it was perfectly healed, with the reality of an active child for whom returning to "normality" was also important.

Zachary helped remove bandages and tape, and assisted during my exam. While there was significant improvement, I felt we needed input from the Burn Team before altering the plan, so I began to prepare my notes to call them. Just an hour later, I received a call from Zachary, stating that he'd taken some pictures of the wound, uploaded them to our computer system and placed them into the patient's chart. This enabled the Burn Team to view the images remotely, and make a much more informed decision about the case. I was struck not only by Zachary's kindness to the patient in our interaction, but by the initiative he took, for the sole purpose of improving this patient's care.

Zachary's advocacy on behalf of his patient, his anticipation that care would be improved by supplying visual evidence for the Burn Team to evaluate from off-site, and his above-and-beyond choice to figure out how to upload the photos into our new computer system made an outstanding impression on me.

I hope to work with Zachary again soon. Until then, I feel confident that he's giving great care on a day-to-day basis.