From the first day she always displayed an altruistic nature. She wasnt simply there to complete the requirements and move along, but she truly valued and looked forward to all her experiences. She was there to learn, grow, and help everyone around her along the way. More importantly, the patients recognized this quality in her as well and confided in her with their innermost feelings. This allowed Gracie to help patients reflect on their thoughts and take steps toward living a healthier and more enjoyable life.

One memory I have is when Gracie ran a patient group activity titled Inside Mask/Outside Mask to promote self-discovery, foster empathy, and empower participants to break down barriers between their internal and external selves, which she developed from her evidence-based research. Patients, students, and staff gathered their thoughts privately on paper about what they keep hidden, how they present themselves, and how others might describe them. Many patients chose to share, and this opened an emotional floodgate of insight, empathy, and inspiration. What was shared made everyone question their own self-perspectives, their perspective on others, and motivated everyone to change and support one another. It was a truly beautiful human experience for all participants, and an exemplary display of nursing intervention to promote personal growth.

Gracie also spoke in depth with her peers and other clinicians on the care team to explore how best to help patients. She reported information she felt was important and listened carefully to others to improve her actions, help others achieve their goals, and ultimately have the best impact on patient-centered care. Gracie always sought out others to have meaningful conversations pertinent to high-quality care provision. Early on, I recognized how Gracie was making connections much quicker than her peers, and I asked her to help others with their work. Gracie followed my instructions and began to look for opportunities to lead her peers by collaborating with them on patient care activities. Gracie demonstrated excellent interpersonal, teamwork, and collaboration skills that directly led to many successes for patients, peers, and the clinical team.

Gracie had many challenging patient experiences while on the city hospital unit, including care provision for those with severe cases of mental illness and substance abuse, recent suicide attempts, symptoms such as psychosis and PTSD, and little to no family support. Although patients were from lifestyles and cultures very different from her own, you never saw a glimpse of judgment from Gracie. She was kind and caring to every patient she interacted with, acting as a role model to all. While assessing patients, Gracie also sought ways to enhance patient care. Not only did she identify room for improvement, but she took the initiative to talk to unit staff about her concerns and how changes could be made.

On the last day of clinical, Gracie was assigned to provide care to a young military veteran suffering from major depressive disorder and PTSD recovering from a recent polysubstance abuse relapse after years of sobriety, and admitted for suicidal/homicidal ideation and auditory hallucinations. This patient was reluctant to talk to Gracie, but with a great deal of patience (weeks), she was able to get him to open up. I believe he grew to trust her by observing her genuine high regard for other patients. She learned this patient had a past suicide attempt and numerous familial losses over recent years including his mother, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, and military comrades. Most notably, his brother from suicide, leaving him with little family support. Gracie completed a thorough psychosocial assessment with no template and many other pertinent nursing assessment tools to develop an accurate patient picture for diagnosis, planning, intervention, and evaluation. The care plan she submitted was of high quality and even included multiple resources she researched for the patient post-discharge. Complex psychiatric patient stories are far too common and rely heavily on care like Gracie provided.