Diane Kolden is caring of patients, peers, as well as others with whom she has never previously met. She is always willing to help anyone in need and is never known to sit down unless she has checked with her teammates to ensure that they are caught up and not in need of assistance. In this particular example, she extended her caring behaviors towards a family in need.

Diane had been taking care of a critically ill patient who had been admitted with heart failure. Because of the severity of her illness, she had been placed on life support. Happily, the patient had recovered and was removed from the ventilator. The family was so grateful to her for the care she had given, they presented her with a bag full of scratch lottery tickets. Initially her thought had been to share the bounty with her co-workers; but instead, another thought had come to mind. Hearing recently from a co-worker about a family that had fallen on some difficult times, she asked this family if it was ok to donate the gift of the tickets to this challenged family. They readily gave their approval. Ironically, one of the visitors happened to be a coordinator for an agency that provided assistance for families in need. Upon hearing the situation with this family, the visitor returned to the ICU with several gifts from her agency for this family in need, so that together with the scratch tickets, this family would be able to celebrate holidays that they would have otherwise had to forget.

Diane Kolden, with the support of her peers, demonstrated not only the caring spirit of a DAISY Nurse, but also the true spirit of the gift of kindness which is Christmas.