Christian Kelly is a behind-the-scenes nurse. Her actual contact with patients is reduced due to the type of nursing position she has. But what she does, and is, makes a huge difference every day on our unit. Last week she was off for two days and I heard at least 4-5 people say: "Where is she?? what a difference she makes when she is here." I heard that, and see it everyday and feel like she needs the same recognition as a patient care nurse. Those nurses can give higher quality care because of the tireless work. Her job is to facilitate much of the paper work, documentation and details that go with the admission and discharge process (most of which is behind the scenes.)

For Example: The unit was full. TCA was full, and the ED had patients waiting to be admitted. There were discharges pending: (females in various rooms, but ED patients male.) She finished the nursing discharge paperwork, went and facilitated the social worker documentation, and made calls to family to expedite time of discharge. She creatively moved patients around, to create male beds, responded to a rapid response on the unit, gave an ETO to another wild aggressive patient, coordinated the cleaning of the room. The nurse getting the patient said she was overwhelmed, so she got report and started the admission process so that the ED could have some relief from their holding issues. In the midst of all of this, another patient needed to be transferred to the floor which she facilitated, and de-escalated another patient who was getting caught up in the chaos of so much movement and change going on in the unit on that particular day. She also was able to expedite insulin orders on a diabetic that had no pre-hospital med reconciliation form. She stopped too, to provide leadership and guidance to one of the techs in our unit who was not sure of how to handle a situation. And then she took a call from an upset, hysterical family member, while remaining calm, compassionate and grounded, (all that with in a two hour time frame.)

Extraordinary compassion: She is interdisciplinary in that she works diligently with other departments to move patients out of the ED and into our unit, or off the floor into our unit, because she cares about not only the patient getting settled into the treatment process but cares about the process and how it affects other nurses.

Sensitivity to self: She knows when to step away from emotionally challenging situations, and re-center and return quickly with renewed caring and calm.

Sensitivity to Other: When she is not performing the tasks she was assigned to do, she will step in and assist others, way before they even know they need some help.

Instills faith and hope: I have heard her problem-solve difficult situations on the unit, and come up with solutions that improve patient care as well as improve the process, thus giving hope and energy during challenging and crisis situations.

She is committed to excellence: Because she floats across all aspects of patient care and functions as an integrator" of information, she improves communication between all disciplines: medical, nursing, techs, social work and leadership.

She is a patient centered nurse: She can be flooded with her work assignment which is facilitating the discharge and admission process, but will ALWAYS stop what she is doing to address the needs of any given patient at any given time with kindness, patience and compassion.