Dana Buriss is an over-the-top nurse who is always ready to swoop in and save her fellow staff members when they're drowning. We had a nurse on our floor this week who had to leave suddenly due to illness. The other nurses and I who were on charge that day would have had to pick up patients. Dana stepped up and said she would take the nurse's group instead of the staff picking up extra patients.

I told Dana that it was unnecessary and that we would be ok, but Dana disagreed. She immediately went to her office, grabbed her stethoscope, and off she went! Dana passed all the morning meds, assessed, and charted for her patients. She was dressed in her professional attire and not prepared for patient care in scrubs. When I saw Dana later, she had lotion all over her blouse from bathing a patient. Her hair was in disarray (and if you know Dana, she is not the nurse with hair in disarray!), and she had that wild-eyed look of someone who'd answered 12 call lights in 10 minutes!

In summary, she didn't just rise to the occasion- she owned it! Our D37 leaders have a plethora of responsibilities and their own workload to attend to on a day-to-day basis. Dana showed true leadership and commitment not only to our patients that day but to our team as well. Nursing is stressful on a normal day, but when staffing is limited, it becomes utterly overwhelming.

Dana's willingness to go above and beyond to support her team made a monumental difference, not only to her fellow coworkers but to the patients, who continued to receive attentive and compassionate care despite the circumstances! Talk about bumping up the team morale on our unit!

Thank you, Dana, for spreading around some D37 fabulousness!