When our first COVID patient was admitted in the middle of our shift, I was trying to decide who would take this patient and trying to adjust the assignments so the nurse taking this patient would only have the one patient.  No one would look at me, since they did not want to be assigned to this patient.  This nurse volunteered to take this patient while still keeping part of her assignment.  When I asked her if she was sure, her comment was, “Let’s do this, we need to take care of the patient.”  She continues to be the nurse who will trade out with you if you do not feel comfortable with taking a COVID patient.

This nurse has been engaged and active on her unit since the day she started.  She sat for and passed her Maternal Newborn Nursing specialty certification as soon as she was eligible and became a Clinical Nurse III shortly afterward.  She is currently completing her BSN and will graduate in December 2021.  [Update:  graduated.]  Staff have asked when she will be taking on the Charge Nurse role.  With school finishing, she is ready to take on the role of Charge Nurse and be officially trained.  In the past, she has stepped in and covered the role without this training when needed.  She is an active member of the Education Committee, which is responsible for planning the department’s yearly Skills Day.  This nurse designed a poster for the post-partum assessment using the BUBBLE-HE anagram.  The poster was so well designed and received by staff that the instructor for the Normal Post-Partum Assessment Class of our Perinatal Core Day 1 asked to use it as a visual aid while she is teaching the class.  She is also an active member of our unit’s newly created Clinical Practice Council.

In order to decrease the use of antibiotics in newborns, the Early-Onset Sepsis (EOS) Calculator was developed by Kaiser Permanente to determine the neonatal risk of developing an infection.  After implementation, there was an increase in incident reports regarding incorrect use of the EOS calculators.  She helped design a reeducation project for nurses on the EOS Calculator with one of her colleagues.  They divided up the staff with each of them taking half of the nurses.  She sat with each nurse and ran through the calculator on MaestroCare.  She explained the reason behind the use of the calculator and had tips and tricks in order to make it easily understandable.  The staff appreciated the education and the way she conducted the teaching of the material.  This education led to a decrease in incident reports on this topic.  While in school, she participated in a Community Health Event with a Nurse Practitioner from Employee Occupation Health and Wellness, where they helped with fitting staff for N95s and providing information on tobacco cessation.

This nurse has a passion for making sure patients receive the correct discharge teaching and instructions.  Her Nurse Residency project revolved around this topic.  She has continued in this practice and observed the difficulty and length of time it took for us to obtain an interpreter who spoke Arabic for our unit.  Being that she is fluent in Farsi, she wanted to find a way that she could help these patients receive the information and care they needed in a timely manner.  She attended the Bridging the Gap class offered at Duke to attain the necessary qualifications in order to act as an Arabic interpreter.  While interpreting for a patient one day, she noticed the grammar on the Arabic discharge instructions for both mom and baby from MaestroCare were incorrect.  She contacted the manager of the Interpreter Department and worked with her to get grammatically correct discharge instructions available for the department to use while our vendor for health education resources, Healthwise, worked out the issue.  She will volunteer to change her assignment to care for an Arabic-speaking patient if she has not been assigned.

During my interview with this nurse, she stated the following reason for wanting to work in our department as:  She wanted to be able to give back the level of care and compassion to our patients that she received when she had her first child over 20 years ago as a Muslim immigrant.  She is passionate about the level of care she provides, and this shows in her work every day.  During patient rounds, I have only received positive feedback on this nurse.  Comments have been:  They feel well cared for from the first moment; she has great insight and tools to help; and she was very caring and loving toward our baby.  She loves to teach new hires, nursing students and Capstone students.  Clinical instructors have said to me that they have been asked by students multiple times to be assigned with her for their weekly rotations.  As a Preceptor, she is patient with new learners and adjusts her teaching to their needs so they are able to grow and stretch their wings to fly as new nurses.

This nurse exemplifies Duke’s Mission, Vision, and Values in the care she provides to her patients and colleagues through the outstanding care that she provides.