"To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of everything, is to be a pediatric nurse" - Anonymous
Being in the hospital is scary. Being in the hospital when you are a kid is terrifying. Everyone is touching you, you are probably in some kind of pain, there are all kinds of wires and tubes taped all over you, sometimes you get tied up and poked with sharp objects, and scary people in blue clothes force you to take medicine all day long. It isn't hard to see that it takes a very special and skilled person to be a pediatric nurse.
Shilo is an exceptionally competent pediatric nurse. She can cath any size kid, stick an IV in even the sickest, most dehydrated child, and is incredibly tuned into the most subtle changes in her patients. It is not because of her clinical competence I want to recognize her, however. It's for the other kinds of skills, the ones you can't see on the outside. She is the kind of nurse that makes and hangs dozens ofdecorationsfrom the ceiling of the unit every season to make it more welcoming and child-friendly. She will glove up and go with her coworkers to love on a kid that has to have a scary or painful procedure. She sits with the 250lb, 15-year-old autistic and often violent patient and reads him a bedtime story every night because he has no family with him. This same patient draws hearts around Shilo's name on the careboard and erases all the others. She possesses a caring that children can just feel, and for that, I want to recognize her and say thank you.