My husband has been admitted to ASW on and off. During this time, we have met some amazing caregivers, and I would be hard-pressed to find only 1 Extraordinary Nurse to nominate for the DAISY Award. We have received the most outstanding care one could imagine during our time here. We have been in the ICU and on the 3rd and 5th Floor. We have experienced the kindest and most professional healthcare on each and every floor, and I would nominate each and every one of them if I could.
With that said, there is one person that stands out in my mind and that is Amanda Estrada. I know it's the charge nurse's job to come around and ask the routine questions about the care you are getting, and if the nurse that day is educating you on the side effects of medication and how often the nurse is coming in the room, etc. I'm not going to lie, sometimes it felt like they were testing you on these things, but when Amanda came around it always seemed so much more than just the routine thing of making sure the nurse was doing a good job. She sincerely wanted to know how we were.
Amanda took the time to visit with us about just normal stuff. She seemed to want to get to know us as real people and not just a patient in the hospital; that really makes a person feel good and well cared for and takes your mind off the illness or matter at hand for just a few minutes. But what really stood out to me was, my husband had been on the 5th Floor for quite a while when he finally needed to have surgery and after surgery, he was moved to ICU. The day after surgery, Amanda showed up in his ICU room just to check to see how he was. I can remember thinking how special that was and how much it meant to me, how that made me feel that she really cared enough to come to check on him. That to me is the perfect example of extraordinary care.