Three nurses at the Ballard Branch of Swedish Medical Center were recently recognized for their hard work.

On Wednesday, Dec. 5, a total of eight nurses, including the three from Ballard, were awarded the prestigious DAISY award, which “rewards and celebrates the extraordinary clinical skill and compassionate care given by nurses everyday.”

The honorees from Ballard were Summer Vandam, RN, who works in OB/GYN; Troy Cavanaugh, RN, who works in Emergency Services; and Glenda Butler, RN, who works in Emergency Services. They were awarded a special, DAISY pin, a certificate and a Shona sculpture entitled “A Healer’s Touch.”
In their letters, nominators had the following to say about the three Ballard nurses:

“Summer is an amazing team player. She goes above and beyond for patients, and will do whatever she can do to make sure that all patients get the best care possible. Summer always tries to secure a good foundation for safety for patients, and is always keeping their health and wellness in mind.”

“One of Troy’s most inspiring clinical experiences was when he was working in a hospital with no perinatal services. On one particular evening he was working in the ED, a car pulled up to the ambulance entrance with a mother in the final stages of labor. Troy delivered the boy, directed the other staff to find the never used infant warmer and created the environment that resulted in both patients doing very well. The exceptional part of this story is Troy’s calm under fire and his ability to direct his team through this unusual and stressful situation.”

“Glenda's role in the ED is often as the charge nurse. She runs the floor with ease and confidence. She works hard and expects those around her to do the same. When you work with her you feel supported and she instills in her colleagues the desire to work hard and as a team. As a patient you would feel very fortunate to have Glenda be your nurse.”

In her opening remarks at the ceremony, Ballard’s Chief Executive Jenniver Graves was also able to highlight the Ballard campus because of the bizarre incident last week when a seagull knocked out power for the entire building -- and much of Ballard -- by flying into a powerline. She reported that though much could have gone wrong, that nothing bad happened and that all of the nurses and doctors were able to carry out their normal functions -- albeit with flashlights. Even surgeries were unaffected. Graves said that they did not receive full power until 7 p.m., even though most of Ballard had power not long after 3 p.m.

DAISY, which stands for Diseases Attacking the Immune System, was established in January, 2000, by the family of J. Patrick Barnes, who died from a disease at the age of 33. The parents, Bonnie Barnes and Mark Barnes, went on to found the DAISY foundation due to the respect for the care their son received while he was sick, even though in the end his life was not saved. Today, there are over 1,000 hospitals which carry out the DAISY recognitions, in seven countries and all of the United States’ 50 states.

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