“She has given me hope that I can control my diabetes…She is amazing!” wrote one patient.

“Her bedside manner and her care and concern are off the charts!” wrote another.

“I always feel like her only patient!” said another LincolnHealth patient. “She just goes out of her way to help you feel comfortable and happy,” wrote yet another.

Each of those statements was written by a LincolnHealth patient who nominated their nurse for a DAISY Award.

The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses was created by the family of J. Patrick Barnes to honor nurses who give outstanding care. It recognizes the care Barnes received during a long struggle with Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura, an auto immune disease. 

Kerri Lilly, RN, LincolnHealth inpatient clinical nurse supervisor, along with LincolnHealth Chief Nursing Officer Christine Anderson, RN, helped bring the award to LincolnHealth. Lilly said it recognizes a personal level of care that has always been at the heart of nursing and at the heart of LincolnHealth.

“As healthcare changes so rapidly and nurses have to maintain a high level of technology, we don’t want to lose that person-to-person contact with patients. There is still a place at the table for genuine compassion,” said Lilly.

The DAISY Award is an effort to highlight the importance of the relationship between patients and nurses, and to recognize nurses who go above and beyond at a time when forces are competing to pull them away from the bedsides of patients.

Reimbursement from government insurers like Medicare and private insurance companies is increasingly tied to the ability of hospitals to prove they are conforming to best practices by documenting care or by the use of technology.

Those types of research-driven initiatives have improved patient safety and are very important to quality care, said Lilly, but she said that one result of those changes is that nurses are spending more and more time on computers.

She said quality care is also driven by things that are more difficult to capture through documentation such as the empathy and respect that patients feel from their nurses.

When patients feel a strong connection to their nurses, they are more likely to engage with efforts to keep them healthy in the hospital, like deep breathing exercises to help them avoid pneumonia or taking a walk to avoid thrombosis.

If patients feel their nurses truly care about them, they are also more likely to listen to instructions on medications and other aspects of treatment plans that they will have to follow independently after they leave the hospital, and that can help keep them safe long after they are discharged.

Nomination forms for the DAISY Award are available at the front desk of both the Miles and the St. Andrews campuses of LincolnHealth.