It is an honor and a privilege to write a letter of support for Polly Willis, MSN, RN-BC, PCCN to receive the DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award. She has been with our organization for over 45 years and served in so many roles that I feel she is a legend in her own time. Polly has been serving as the Director of Nursing Clinical Excellence and Magnet® Program since 2016. In this capacity, she has written the Magnet documents for Emory University Hospital and Emory University Orthopaedics & Spine Hospital several times. She was the lead author of EUH’s first Magnet document, which resulted in the hospital’s first designation in 2014, and is the author of EUH’s subsequent Magnet documents, the last resulting in the hospital’s re-designation in 2018 and 2023. Polly is the author of EUOSH’s Magnet documents. This resulted in their first designation in 2016 and re-designation in 2021. Polly was a contributor to Saint Josephs Hospital’s first Magnet document, which resulted in its first designation in 1995. This was the third Magnet designation in the nation overall and the first Magnet designation for a community hospital. She was the Magnet Program Director and wrote their second document in 1999 and third in 2004. In the Magnet documents, Polly promotes meaningful recognition by providing countless examples of how nurses optimized patient outcomes through caring practices, clinical judgment, and clinical inquiry. She is an active participant in a plethora of nursing, leadership, and interdisciplinary meetings and gleans exemplars of excellence in each setting. She then has a tremendous gift of articulating others’ successes in writing. This was particularly valuable as nurses worked in challenging conditions throughout the pandemic. Reading how nurses’ contributions made a difference and demonstrated clinical excellence during such demanding times made the feedback that much more appreciated. Polly’s prolific writing has resulted in other Emory entities seeking her assistance in writing examples and reviewing sources of evidence. She consistently refers to her job as ‘the best in the world except for the two weeks prior to a Magnet site visit.’

Polly provides meaningful recognition in other ways. She nominates nurses in a number of categories for Emory Nurse of the Year, Magnet Nurse of the Year, March of Dimes Heroes in Action, and Atlanta Journal Constitution Nurse of the Year awards. She recommends colleagues from all disciplines to be featured in the weekly Healthlines’ newsletter Person on the Street segment.

Polly has always demonstrated outstanding clinical skills, compassionate patient care, and dedication to the nursing profession. During her career as a clinical leader at the bedside, Polly went above and beyond in delivering high-quality healthcare services and made significant contributions to patient outcomes and the nursing profession as a whole. As a clinical leader, while working with patients with cardiac problems, her commitment to clinical excellence and optimal patient outcomes was palpable. When patients were assigned nurses based on the synergy between patient needs and nurse competencies, and patients requested reassignment for personal preferences, Polly provided them with the rationale for the assignments being made as they were. She has been known for her honesty and candor and for saying, “Today, you are the sickest patient on our unit. Your nurse was assigned to you because she is our best at understanding your condition and how to manage it with expert care. If you want us to assign a different nurse with less knowledge and experience, we will respect that. The decision is yours.”

Throughout her career, Polly demonstrated compassion and a steadfast commitment to the nursing profession. Her ability to lead and inspire those around her has created a positive and empowering work environment. 

Polly prioritizes others’ self-development. She brings opportunities to others to showcase their work. For example, she advocates for nurses to present and publish their work through articles in refereed journals and abstracts for local, regional, and national conferences, such as the Magnet and ASPAN conferences.

Polly has taken strategic measures to provide structure, clear communication, and accountability to EUH.  Specifically, she has been conducting monthly champion meetings and weekly email updates in which she provides information on nursing staff recruitment, unit initiatives, and policy changes, as well as highlights individual staff accomplishments. She is transparent with her communication campaigns and is available and willing to take the time to answer staff questions. In addition to improving communication and structure, she arrives to work early in the morning prior to AM shift change to be present for both night and day shift staff. In an effort to improve morale and leadership support, she hand-writes encouraging notes for staff members and takes the time to create small gifts of appreciation for all staff members.

Polly is ethically minded. She serves on the Emory University Hospital Ethics Committee and shows empathy for those dealing with trying situations. She is also on the team that coordinates Schwartz Rounds. She can appreciate the patient and healthcare team members’ perspectives. As a member of the Nursing Research and Evidence-Based Practice Council, Polly vets projects to help assure that subject participation in the project would not be overly burdensome and that potential subjects would not be coerced into participating. 

Having high levels of systems thinking, Polly also has a gift of being able to focus on the big picture of a situation. When providing feedback or an opinion on a circumstance, she not only considers the immediate effects but also the long-term implications for the hospital and healthcare system. She doesn’t get distracted or bogged down by small details with little to no relevance to the matter at hand.

Polly promotes others’ professional growth and development in a number of ways. She advocates for nurses to attend the Magnet conference each year. Here, nurses learn of innovative, evidence-based ways to optimize patient outcomes. She participates in writing salons where nurses can bring their ideas and receive help with writing abstracts that are then submitted for presentation at professional nursing meetings. She guides nurses when they want to seek promotion through the Emory PLAN program. She has promoted the value of certification by procuring vouchers from ANCC and ASPAN so that nurses can take certification exams without having to pay the exam fee forward. 

Polly is recognized as a transformational nursing leader. She is involved in several rapid improvement experiments, thus demonstrating transformational leadership in her practice and promoting quality improvement for the patients and staff. She has led and transformed clinical practice in our system consistently for decades. She has supported the Unit Director Council leaders to help close the gaps among Emory nursing leaders at all levels and helped ensure that the Council was a safe space where leaders can speak freely without the fear of negative reprisals. In addition to engaging others in professional development, Polly participates in interdisciplinary continuing education to stay abreast in healthcare trends and maintains her specialty certification. She presents topics at nursing conferences that have national and international impact. She is a co-investigator of a multi-site collaborative research project addressing Clinician Wellbeing and an international comparative study of perceptions of shared governance with a hospital in Hamburg, Germany. She is the author of several articles in refereed journals. 

Polly is recognized by the broader nursing community as a transformational nursing leader. She is an active member of the American Nurses Association/Georgia Nurses Association, Vascular Nurses Society, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, National Association of Quality Professionals, American Association of Heart Failure Nurses, and National Association of Orthopaedic Nurses. Within GNA, she is a member of the Social Justice and Racial Equity Workgroup. She wrote the Standards for Vascular Nursing for the American Nurses Association. She served as member of the Board of Directors for the Atlanta Area Chapter of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and the Metro Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Nurses Association.

Polly uses her leadership platform to advance clinical excellence.  Perhaps Polly’s greatest attribute is her ability to empower and influence others. She has strong communication skills, is visionary, and is an active listener. Her unrelenting commitment and dedication to nurses, patients, families, and the nursing profession make her our role model and the ideal recipient of the prestigious DAISY Lifetime Achievement Award.

Note: This is Polly's 2nd DAISY Award!