The DAISY Award is an international program that rewards and celebrates the extraordinary compassionate and skillful care given by nurses every day.

Riverside Healthcare is proud to be DAISY Award Partner, recognizing one of our nurses with this special honor once a month.

About The DAISY Foundation

The DAISY Foundation was established in 1999 by the family of J. Patrick Barnes who died of complications of the auto-immune disease Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura (ITP) at the age of 33. (DAISY is an acronym for diseases attacking the immune system.) During Pat’s eight-week hospitalization, his family was awestruck by the care and compassion his nurses provided not only to Pat but to everyone in his family. So one of the goals they set in creating a Foundation in Pat’s memory was to recognize extraordinary nurses everywhere who make an enormous difference in the lives of so many people by the super-human work they do every day.

The DAISY Award

Each DAISY Award Honoree will be recognized at a ceremony in her/his unit and will receive a beautiful certificate, a DAISY Award pin, and a hand-carved stone sculpture entitled A Healer’s Touch.

Congratulations to our first DAISY Award winner here at Riverside!

The first DAISY Award recipient at Riverside is Amy T. Amy is a nurse on 3 Cardiac Telemetry who was nominated by a patient’s family. The nationwide DAISY award program recognizes the exceptional clinical skills and compassion shown by nurses.

The nomination read, “Amy was my mother’s nurse during a stressful time in our life. My mother was going to have heart surgery and my siblings and I were all nervous, as well as my mother. My father passed away earlier this year during a heart surgery so we were all anxious and scared. Amy went out of her way to come talk to us multiple times the day before, held my mother’s hand, reassured her that the doctors were wonderful and would take amazing care of her.”

“The day of the procedure she was so calm and it eased my mother’s nerves as well as mine. She went through her preparation every step of the way and even came to her recovery room to see her after her shift. That to me is the definition of an amazing nurse, an angel. She truly made my mother’s experience wonderful. Riverside will always have our hearts. Thank you Amy!”