Entire Nursing Team at Twin Cities Hospital Receives ‘DAISY Award’

TEMPLETON, Calif. - March 4, 2014 - PRLog -- Fifty nurses from Twin Cities Community Hospital (http://www.twincitieshospital.com/)’s Definitive Observation Unit (DOU) and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nursing teams have received the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing this quarter – this is the first time an entire nursing team, not just an individual nurse, at the hospital has been granted the DAISY Award.

         Part of the international DAISY (Diseases Attacking the Immune System) Foundation, the quarterly, peer-elected DAISY AWARD program was created to provide meaningful recognition of “the super-human efforts nurses everywhere perform every day.”

         Director of Twin Cities ICU/DOU Sheila McMillan, RN, CCRN explains that the award offers an opportunity to assign value to and track data of a quality of care that is not easily quantified. “Going beyond clinical and medical nursing performance, this award gets at the equally important, yet often underappreciated, humanistic aspect of nursing—the skill of offering peace and comfort to patients and their families,” McMillan says. “A former patient’s recent letter to the nursing staff puts it perfectly: ‘The best of training goes wanting if you do not have the “heart” to apply it. And you do.’”

         As part of the DAISY Award presentation, a ceremony for the DOU/ICU nurses was held recently before colleagues, physicians, patients, and visitors. The nursing staff received the DAISY Award certificate, which reads: "In deep appreciation of all you do, who you are, and the incredibly meaningful difference you make in the lives of so many people." The team also received a DAISY Award pin, a hand-carved serpentine stone sculpture, entitled “A Healer's Touch,” a large celebratory banner that will hang in the units for three months, a featured placement on the spotlight page of the DAISY Foundation’s website, and cinnamon rolls.

         “Twin Cities is proud and honored that its combined DOU/ICU Nursing Team has been recognized with the DAISY Award for its superb caring and dedication to its patients,” said Twin Cities Community Hospital CEO Mark Lisa. “This was a result of a consistent record of many individual and collective acts of professionalism in those units, and it is a beautiful reflection of what Twin Cities is all about.”

         The DAISY Foundation was started in Glen Allen, CA by family members of J. Patrick Barnes, who died from complications of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), a little-known but not uncommon auto-immune disease. As a way of thanking Barnes’s nurses, his family established the award program as a way to provide meaningful recognition of “the super-human efforts nurses everywhere perform every day.”  Today, more than 1,400 healthcare facilities are committed to honoring the compassion and skill of their nurses with the DAISY Award. More than 35,000 nurses from the United States and other countries have been honored, while more than 200,000 have been nominated and recognized for their extraordinary nursing since 2004.

         For information about Twin Cities Community Hospital, please visit www.twincitieshospital.com or call Press Agency AR & Co. PR & Marketing at (805) 239-4443 or email pr@arandcompany.com.