Darcey demonstrates compassion every day in her interactions with patients, their families, and her co-workers. Her kind and caring nature make it easy for patients to confide in her and share their concerns. Darcey has the wonderful ability to make genuine connections with patients. She makes the effort to listen intently to patients and understand their needs and concerns. She provides emotional support when needed and will take the time to sit with patients to help provide them with reassurance when they are anxious. She will provide Healing Touch to patients on the unit who are feeling anxious or in pain.
In her role as Bariatric Coordinator, Darcey is responsible for coordinating pre-op appointments for our Bariatric patients before their surgical date and helps make hotel arrangements for patients traveling to San Diego from out of the area. She keeps in contact with them to make sure they get to their all their appointments on time and makes sure the pre-op process is as smooth and stress-free as possible. During their hospital stay, she rounds on all her patients ensuring that their needs are met and all their questions are answered. She spends the time needed educating patients about their diet and daily goals while they are in the hospital. Patients love working with her and she is recognized on a daily basis during leadership rounds. Darcey continues caring for patients even after discharge. She makes check-in phone calls after patients are discharged to make sure they are doing well and achieving their post-surgery diet intake goals and to answer any questions or concerns that may come up. Patients really appreciate this personalized service and many times return to the hospital to thank us personally for the wonderful service they have received from Darcey.
Darcey is currently working to obtain an Uber/Lyft contract for Bariatric Patients. Previously, the Bariatric program had worked with a cab company and there were many issues that came up. Darcey had to provide service recovery on many occasions due to the company treating our patients poorly and not bringing the patients to the right locations at the right times. Darcey provided amazing service recovery for these patients and the patients were very grateful for how she advocated for them and how she showed compassion for how they were treated.
Darcey also goes above and beyond for the 7th floor leadership team and unit staff. She has critical care nursing experience and she is an amazing resource to have on the unit to ask clinical questions and to provide great advice in challenging situations. We had one patient on our unit who had a very complex abdominal wound and complex medical issues. This patient and his partner were from out of state and were brought to the hospital after the patient got very sick on a cruise. Darcey developed a close relationship with this patient and his partner: visiting them both daily, providing a healing touch, providing emotional support and assisting the nurses with the complicated abdominal wound dressing change. This made a world of difference for this patient and his partner. They had no family in San Diego and Darcey became family. Her support and encouragement helped them to get through some very difficult times.
Darcey supports unit leadership by helping to complete case studies from RRT or Code Blue events on our unit. She will take this information and create educational posters for the nursing staff. These have been wonderful learning tools for staff.
On a daily basis, Darcey will offer to help start IVs for nurses and help the charge nurses to cover lunches. She is never too busy to help and will always make time to support her co-workers.