The DAISY Award was created to thank a skillful and compassionate nurse. In the Emergency Department, it is often more difficult to touch patients' lives because we are only there for a flash. We spend minutes to hours with them and then they are gone. They are transferred, admitted, discharged, or they passed on. Often our names are not remembered unless we made a large impact on them.
When contemplating of someone who meets these criteria, the only Nurse who exemplifies this, lives this, and instills this in others, is Ray Torres. Since I have started here in the Emergency Room, Ray has been the epitome of what I could ever dream to be as a nurse. Ray is caring, compassionate, skillful, knowledgeable, crucial in critical situations and the main resource for everyone in the entire hospital. Ray is the go-to man. When someone does not know something, they ask Ray. I could go on and on about how wonderful of a supervisor/charge RN he is but I am going to further discuss how Ray exhibits what it is to be a hero in the Emergency Department.
Ray meets everyone with a smile. My most vivid memory of Ray being compassionate was when a patient came in covered in feces, a drug abuser, loud and offensive, and Ray treated this patient with the same compassion he would treat his family. I know this should be the standard, but it is often not. Nothing gets to Ray. He is always in a good mood, calm, and happy. I have never heard a cross word come out of his mouth and when he hears others talking negatively he quickly turns the conversation to positivity. He can make a rainbow out of a mud puddle. Patients request to talk to Ray. I have heard over a hundred times Ray is the best nurse here, Ray is so nice, Ray always gets the job done. This is not just comments by patients but by other co-workers. Ray can calm down any situation.
Recently we had a very combative and abusive patient come in and Ray was able to talk to the patient and de-escalate the situation. By the end of the conversation, the patient was thanking Ray for his time and apologizing for his behavior.
Ray has a way of educating staff and patients that instills a drive to learn more and better themselves. Co-workers, from physicians, nurses, ER techs, admitting, housekeepers, CNAs, RT, radiology techs, US techs, lab tech, pharmacy and anyone else who ever steps foot in the hospital, can tell you who Ray is and what a wonderful job he does each day. Patients will tell you heart-warming stories of how he has gone above and beyond for them. Something as small as a warm blanket to praying with a family in their time of need, all his actions havea purpose behind them. Ray is not only the model for what a DAISY Award Nurse should look like but what an Adventist Health employee should strive to model. He is not only very active and engaged here but also in the community. Overall Ray exemplifies all these aspects of his everyday life and we are fortunate enough to experience him here at work. I am honored to nominate Ray for this award.
In the 40 Leadership rounds, I have done on my direct reports his name has been brought up by his co-workers for his great leadership skills and willingness to help in several of them.