March 2013
Roberto
Mendez
,
RN
Ortho Neuro
Huntington Hospital
Pasadena
,
CA
United States

 

 

 

We are honored to see you receive the DAISY Award Roberto.

You have grown tremendously as a nurse and have shown your passion for the nursing profession. In 2012 you were unanimously nominated and became the chair of our Unit Based Council. That became a surprise to you and we saw how you may have doubted yourself if you can lead a team, but you embraced the challenge and unknowingly confirmed the qualities you never thought you had. It was an incredible experience for a manger to witness how such a shy, nurse, with so much to offer, developed and flourished, and challenged his own self. You are an emerging leader of 6 East. You led the team with humor and inspiration. You were focused, organized, and closely worked with the team to meet our goals. We get our work done and accomplish so much with your examples of collaboration, trust, encouragement and inspiration. Things are made possible with staff like you that appreciates the opportunity, embraces the challenge, and give the best possible for outcomes that surpasses everyone else's. You were like a garden that slowly flourished , yet gave us so much feeling of accomplishment to our team.

Roberto, you are a Magnet RN. You have strong belief that it is your professional responsibility to continue to learn to improve your patient care and contribute to the nursing profession and our unit. You are always the first one to volunteer if there are classes offered such as the Evidenced Based Practice. I remember how excited you were attending the EBP class at UCLA. You also came back and shared with me the ideas we could implement in our department. With you and our team's ideas, we have developed a bowel program for the orthopedic population.

Roberto, you show your dedication beyond the four walls of 6 East. I vividly recall when we were preparing for Magnet. Bonnie had an idea of creating a video and needed nurses to participate. The video involved dancing and singing and would take up a few hours. You had shared with me that you cannot dance nor sing, but you will come anyway and give it your best. So there you are, on your only day off, between the two jobs that you hold, showing your moves on the stairs, in the hallways, singing with the rest of us pretending we have such great talents. I won't comment on your dancing but we appreciated your participation and you made it fun.

I am proud to share with you today how you impact patient lives, and your team. First and foremost, as I manage to round on a few patients, they often say how you go above your call of duty. These are the quotes from patients I've met that you've taken care of "Roberto is the Best. He was so attentive to me I never felt so well cared for"."Roberto understands what I'm going through." " He stays on top of my pain and is always there for me". "He's very caring and frequently reminds me of my safety".

I met with the patient that nominated you for the DAISY Award. On the day he wrote the nomination, he asked to speak to me to share about the nurse that showed care and compassion for his patients. He has been our patient a few times and mentioned that he would always get good care in our unit but you topped everyone that has cared for him so far.

When I informed your co-workers that you were selected for the DAISY Award, they had nothing but excitement and were all proud to hear it was you.

I want to share with you some of their comments.

1.) I am so glad it's Roberto! He always comes to work with a positive attitude. He never complains and no matter how busy we are, he always finds the time to help. He works well with everybody, RNs and PCAs.

2.) Roberto is very thorough with his work. What's special about him is he taught me that every time we come to work, our goal should always be to keep our patients happy.

Roberto, like many others, you had faced some unpleasant challenges. But with your perseverance, integrity, and good work ethic, you rose above all those challenges and became a shining star of an exemplary Magnet Designated, Huntington Hospital and the 18th Best Orthopedic unit in the nation!