Nurses at Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital Are Recognized with

the International DAISY Award!

By Qu Yuedan

After reading the title, you may wonder: “What is the DAISY Award”?

The background story is this: The DAISY Foundation originated 17 years ago in 1999 in honor of J. Patrick Barnes. Suffering from an autoimmune condition abbreviated as ITP, Patrick died from its complications at the age of 33. Nevertheless, during his eight-week illness his family marveled at the skillful and amazingly compassionate care he received from his nurses - even when he was totally sedated. In return, they wanted to say THANK YOU to all nurses. Patrick’s wife, Tena, developed the DAISY acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System, to say “Thank you” to nurse professionals and to honor the super-human work nurses do in direct care of patients and families every day.

Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital (SRRSH) joined the DAISY Foundation in 2015 honoring our wonderful nurses and making it the first organization in China to cooperate with the top award. Ye Zhihong, Vice President for Nursing said, “A lot of times nurses do what they should do to care for a patient, but often they have no idea what a difference they make to them. We want to ensure that our nurses know how deserving they are in the perspective of patients and families for the care they deliver with love.”

With input from clinical nurses, we at SRRSH created our own nomination form, titled “Dear nurses, I want to say THANK YOU” followed by an brief introduction to the DAISY Award, which gives patients and families a good understanding of what to write. The collecting boxes, created by one of our nurses from sharp containers and beautiful stickers, sit at every nursing station so that patients have easy access to deposit the nomination forms. 

The whole program is steered by the Nursing Culture Committee, which collects the forms, reads the stories, and selects the most outstanding and wonderful stories on which all staff vote. More than 700 nominations were collected in 2015, and 12 nurses were voted as international DAISY honorees based on their nomination stories. All DAISY Award winners receive a certificate declaring them an “extraordinary nurse”, a red pin created uniquely for SRRSH (In our culture red is for celebration.), and a sculpture of the “Healer’s Touch”, which was created by African artists who sign their names on each one they create. The nomination stories for the winners are also registered on the DAISY Foundation website.

This year, we also received more than 700 nomination stories, and 12 of them were voted as DAISY honorees for 2016. Each nomination story will be placed on line (the DAISY website), one for each month. We celebrate the big event each year on Nurses’ Day (May 12th) and share some nomination stories with hundreds of participating nurses. One of the past honorees, Fang Xiaohang said, “I just did what I should do for her and what I do for all my patients. I never thought she would actually take time to write down the little things that happened. I am surprised and proud at the same time when I know that I’ve won the Award. It makes me feel all the endeavors I’ve tried my best to do, paid off.” Another nurse who participated in the celebration said, “As a nurse, I never knew we could make such a great difference to another human being. Their stories were so touching that I cried several times. I’m proud to be a nurse!”

This is the beauty of DAISY, creating a way for patients to say “Thank you” for all the amazing work nurses do, day in day out and also reminding nurses why we are here in the first place.