Kathy Mills
August 2023
Kathy
Mills
,
RN
Wound Care Clinic
Hillsboro Medical Center
Hillsboro
,
OR
United States
Every single day we were there, we saw Kathy provide excellent patient care with compassion and respect for each patient she encountered.
We are nominating Kathy Mills for a DAISY Award for her repeated extraordinary patient care. Kathy is a wound care nurse at Hillsboro Medical Center (HMC) where my nursing students were assigned for a clinical rotation. Every single day we were there, we saw Kathy provide excellent patient care with compassion and respect for each patient she encountered.
Kathy would read about each person in the EHR to make sure she understood the medical plan. Then she would greet each patient and talk with them about their understanding, goals, concerns, fears, preferences, and anything else that might impact her care. She would then explain her plan to them and get their buy-in. Kathy was always open to feedback and would adjust the plan as needed to fit the patient or situation. These adjustments could include ordering topical lidocaine to make the dressing change more comfortable, collaborating with the primary nurse to ensure the person was medicated for pain before the procedure, scheduling care for a certain time, including the family caregiver and the list goes on. Anything that was important to the patient, was important to Kathy.
As if the care she provided to her patients wasn't already extraordinary enough, Kathy also provided extraordinary care and education to the nursing students. Kathy would seek me out each day and tell me which people she would be seeing for which types of dressing changes and invite students along. When the students showed up, Kathy would walk them through the entire process from start to finish. She would explain what she was doing and why. What she was looking for, what it meant, how to measure, document, intervene, improvise, improve patient comfort, and more. As she was teaching the students, she was also teaching the patient (and often family members).
Through her actions, Kathy Mills has engaged and empowered patients and nursing students while providing them with education and extraordinary care. Kathy has repeatedly demonstrated the values we want to see most in a nurse- respect, honesty, integrity, compassion, care, commitment, and collaboration. This is why we are nominating an extraordinary nurse, Kathy Mills, for the DAISY Award.
Kathy would read about each person in the EHR to make sure she understood the medical plan. Then she would greet each patient and talk with them about their understanding, goals, concerns, fears, preferences, and anything else that might impact her care. She would then explain her plan to them and get their buy-in. Kathy was always open to feedback and would adjust the plan as needed to fit the patient or situation. These adjustments could include ordering topical lidocaine to make the dressing change more comfortable, collaborating with the primary nurse to ensure the person was medicated for pain before the procedure, scheduling care for a certain time, including the family caregiver and the list goes on. Anything that was important to the patient, was important to Kathy.
As if the care she provided to her patients wasn't already extraordinary enough, Kathy also provided extraordinary care and education to the nursing students. Kathy would seek me out each day and tell me which people she would be seeing for which types of dressing changes and invite students along. When the students showed up, Kathy would walk them through the entire process from start to finish. She would explain what she was doing and why. What she was looking for, what it meant, how to measure, document, intervene, improvise, improve patient comfort, and more. As she was teaching the students, she was also teaching the patient (and often family members).
Through her actions, Kathy Mills has engaged and empowered patients and nursing students while providing them with education and extraordinary care. Kathy has repeatedly demonstrated the values we want to see most in a nurse- respect, honesty, integrity, compassion, care, commitment, and collaboration. This is why we are nominating an extraordinary nurse, Kathy Mills, for the DAISY Award.