My mother was in ICU and not getting any better. I had to make the call to move her to comfort care. Fran talked to me. She brought me everything I needed and that included things I did not know I needed. Her level of care was over the top exceptional and her attention to detail was super fantastic. She made me feel very comforted in this time of everything being horrible. She really made me feel like my mom and my family were her only concerns. I felt comfortable enough that I could come home and get some sleep because she had the watch and my mom was safe in her care.
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Fran's peers nominated her for her abilities to think outside of the standard guidelines. She is always your "go to" team member and will always be right in the thick of things with you. Fran is able to assess any situation and know where she fits at that time. She's a wonderful colleague.
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To understand everything that we were going through you have to understand what my family has been through in the last two weeks. My mother suddenly passed away at the age of 65. We traveled to Florida and back in a week, I got bereavement leave from work. I returned to work on Tuesday and when I came home on Friday morning I was exhausted. Just as I started to get rest, I received the phone call that my mother-in-law was hospitalized. Several hours after arriving in the ICU we decided to move towards comfort care. After a few hours, seeing how Fran cared for her and for us, I felt like Fran could watch over my mother-in-law and I could go home and get some rest. Fran had been immediately responsive with morphine when mom groaned and I asked for it. As a nurse I know it's not always possible to respond to the requests immediately, but she did. She explained everything in plain terms, even after she found out that I was a nurse because that day I was a family member.