In my almost 9 years with the Village, I've never worked with a nurse of Amanda's caliber before joining the DaVita Camelot team a little over a year ago.

I often say, "We can't care more about our patients than they care about themselves," but Amanda, time and time again, proves me wrong. She really does care more about a lot of our patients than they do about themselves—sadly, sometimes more than their own families.

Whether it's encouraging patients to come to their dialysis treatments when they call out, rescheduling a self-care appointment on her day off to come in and run IUF treatments so our fluid-heavy patients don't get hospitalized, getting home at 10 at night after a 15-hour day and not getting to see her kids before bed, making sure all of her teammates have had their lunch breaks before taking hers, or hearing "AMANDA!" called out more times in a shift than anyone can count because she's literally the mom of our clinic to patients and staff alike, Amanda does it all.

Whatever stressors Amanda may be dealing with in her personal life as a single mom of two teenagers are left at the door. When she comes to work, Amanda is 100% committed to providing the best level of care to our patients.

She listens with empathy, is thorough and thoughtful in her work, completes tasks before even being asked, excels in her communication, and still manages to bring a smile and a little humor to the day.

Good nurses like Amanda are hard to come by, and even though she doesn't do what she does to seek praise or recognition, she is most deserving of it.

It's an honor to work alongside Amanda, and I know she would be honored to be the recipient of this prestigious award.