While the palliative care team could trumpet (and should) Mary's compassionate attributes, the patients almost always do it for us. I can't name how many times I've heard patients either tell me or have overheard them tell Mary when they finally meet her of their gratitude for her and her responsiveness to their questions/needs. They frequently report how wonderful she is, how caring and how helpful she's been for them. I've heard a handful of families thank Mary for being their "angel".
Mary helps coordinate our outpatient palliative care program which is strongly tied to our inpatient program. She dedicates her work day to identifying and supporting their needs as well as troubleshooting patient/family concerns. These range from medication questions, refills and reconciliation, appointment questions, appointment scheduling, durable medical equipment, transportation obstacles, prior authorizations, insurance confusion and the coordination of care that our patients so often require when followed by many different providers and services. Most importantly she helps assuage the fear and concern linked to the above issues in the setting of our patients' life-limiting or life-threatening diagnosis and she does so with the patience and caring that anyone deserves. One of her best qualities is her ability to do so even when callers' emotions rooted in fear and frustration with "the system" sometimes make it quite challenging. Both our team and our patients are very grateful for Mary's role with the Palliative Care team.
The above doesn't completely do justice to Mary's positive impact on our patients and families so please strongly consider her for this recognition in hopes that the DAISY Award might begin to attempt to.