Nurses honored for 'extraordinary care'

DAISY Award winner Clare Cull (second from right) with (from left) Neuro ICU manager Kathi Waite, Chief Nursing Officer Carolyn Sanders and President and President and CEO Bruce Schroffel.

Two nurses – one inpatient, the other outpatient – recently received the University of Colorado Hospital's DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses.

The DAISY (Diseases Attacking the Immune System) Foundation, based in Glen Ellen, Calif., established the award in 2000 to honor extraordinary care extended by a provider to a patient or family.

Clare Cull, R.N., a clinical nurse in the Neuro Intensive Care Unit, received the award for the compassionate care she provided a critically ill patient and his family. In nominating Cull for the award, her nurse manager, Kathi Waite, R.N., M.S., C.C.R.N., related comments she received from another nurse about the kindness and sympathy Cull extended to the patient's family as he lay "at death's door."

On Mother's Day, Cull again helped to console the patient's mother, helping her through the day and a difficult emotional time. Cull's actions "evidence her extraordinary caring and compassion for this family and all others she comes into contact with," Waite wrote in her nomination. "She truly exemplifies that for which UCH and the DAISY Award stand."

Nancy Gavi, R.N., a clinical nurse who has worked in the Internal Medicine Clinic in the Anschutz Outpatient Pavilion for 13 years, received her DAISY for the assistance she provided a patient suffering from severe schizophrenia.

After she learned that the constant aches and pains the patient complained of were likely the result of having no bed to sleep in, Gavi offered him a bed her family wasn't using. She got sheets for the bed and, with the help of her husband, carried it up two flights of stairs, then set it up. The good deed would have gone unnoticed but for the fact Steve Ross, M.D., who practices at the clinic, saw a phone note from the patient thanking Gavi.

In nominating Gavi for the award, Ross and Internal Medicine Practice Manager Robin Pettigrew wrote, "Needless to say, the patient was exceedingly grateful, and now seems to be able to manage his pain with just Ibuprofen. ... All in all, this would have been an outstanding good deed for any patient, but it is especially amazing for a difficult patient."

Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Services Carolyn Sanders, R.N., Ph.D., was on hand at both ceremonies to present the awards to Cull and Gavi. Each received a certificate and a small, hand-carved statue made by the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe and purchased by the DAISY Foundation.