When they first envisioned an award to honor the care and kindness shown by nurses to their patients, the Barnes family thought five or 10 hospitals might be interested in participating.
“Twenty-five years later, there are more than 6,500 health care facilities and nursing schools in 41 countries honoring nurses with the DAISY award,” cofounder Bonnie Barnes said in a recent video on the DAISY Foundation’s website. “Over 2.7 million times, a patient, a family member or a colleague has taken the time to say thank you to a nurse by nominating them for this award.”
What exactly is the DAISY award?
For the Barnes family, it was a way to thank the nurses at Fred Hutch Cancer Center who cared for J. Patrick Barnes, a Hodgkin lymphoma patient who died in his early 30s from the autoimmune disease idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP). After his death, the Barnes family created the DAISY Foundation and the award — DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System — to honor him and show their appreciation for the extraordinary compassion that nurses demonstrate each and every day.
For Fred Hutch's associate chief nursing officer Suni Elgar, MPH, BSN, the DAISY is a boon as well as a balm. It not only provides crucial recognition for the profession of nursing; it also helps combat the heartbreak and compassion fatigue that can come with caring for those who are suffering.
“We are amazingly privileged to spend time with patients and their families, but the treatment doesn’t always result in a cure,” said Elgar, who’s worked at Fred Hutch for 18 years. “That can be hard. It can be draining on those who grow close to the patients. The DAISY award ceremonies provide time to reflect and think about how important our role is, how important our patients are and it also reminds us to make sure we’re caring for ourselves.”
For the 25th anniversary, DAISY founders Bonnie and Mark Barnes hosted a special reunion celebration Wednesday on the Fred Hutch campus with a slew of former DAISY award winners as well as one of the nurses who cared for the couple’s son during the time he spent in the hospital with ITP.
“I can't tell you what it means to Mark and me to be here at Fred Hutch,” Bonnie Barnes said in her opening remarks. “It all started because of Fred Hutch nurses almost 25 years ago. After eight weeks in the hospital, we lost our Patrick to complications of the autoimmune disease ITP. We were in such a dark place. What in the world could we do in his memory? As we talked about those awful eight weeks, we kept finding ourselves looking for that positive thing, and we found it pretty quickly: it was his nurses.”
Barnes said her family wasn’t at all surprised by the clinical excellence the nurses displayed, but they were astonished by the kindness shown by the team.
“We expected they would be great clinically,” she said. “What we didn't expect and what touched our hearts was the way his nurses delivered their care: their compassion, their sensitivity, their thoughtfulness.”
A dozen or so frontline oncology nurses at the event also spoke about what can be a stressful, heartbreaking and at times thankless job.
“Having a DAISY pin or a statue at home is very meaningful,” one past winner shared. “Especially when days are tough and you start to wonder ‘Am I really making a difference?’ Thank you for giving us a way to know that what we do is important.”
Others spoke about how a DAISY award, especially one based on a patient’s nomination, makes them feel “empowered,” “reinvigorated” and “inspired.”
— Fred Hutch associate chief nursing officer Suni Elgar
DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing went to the following Fred Hutch nurses: Sarah Kleier, BSN, RN; John Skaggs, LPN, and Olivia Mullen, BSN, OCN.
The DAISY Award for Nurse Leader went to Kimberly Ito, BSN, RN, OCN.
The DAISY Award for Nurse Educator went to Katie Ortner-Henry, BSN, RN, OCN.
The DAISY Nursing Team Award went to the Long-Term Follow-Up (LTFU) Nursing Team, which includes:
“We had quite an exciting week,” Elgar said of the festivities. “In addition to the visit from the Barnes family, we presented seven Rosemary Ford scholarships. We give scholarships to support nurses who want to work in oncology after graduating from nursing school or who are Fred Hutch employees pursuing advanced degrees.”
Longtime nurse Rosemary Ford worked with Fred Hutch’s early bone marrow transplant pioneers, including Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas, MD, known as the father of the BMT. Shortly after her retirement in 2015, Fred Hutch began awarding scholarships in her honor.
“We also had a Nurses Week Town Hall with a talk about resilience and how to defeat burnout,” Elgar said. “And, of course, we gave out additional DAISY awards.”
Fred Hutch nurses also participated in “Spirit Days” all through the week, wearing themed gear (think funny socks, tropical shirts, favorite sports team jerseys); listened to a panel discussion with patients and caregivers who shared stories of appreciation, and of course, enjoyed some tasty treats, including cookies and soft-serve ice cream.
Elgar, who recently served as interim chief nursing officer, said the past few years have been particularly difficult for nurses across the country.
“COVID was pretty awful,” she said. “Everybody here pitched in extra but it was a challenge for everyone — and there was burnout. One thing the pandemic did was make people reprioritize. Some nurses left to be closer to their families and we were happy for them, but it’s still hard. Turnover is always hard, no matter the reason.”
The pandemic, she said, also led the organization to “take steps to figure out how we can better support nurses as far as training, onboarding and mentoring.”
Compassion fatigue, she said, is a very real concern for nurses.
“We have to figure out how to refill that cup,” Elgar said. “Sometimes doing things like wearing silly socks for Nurses Week can help.”
The first program of its kind in the world, DAISY not only recognizes extraordinarily compassionate care, it also provides hospitals and cancer centers with a useful tool for recruitment, retention and building much-needed resilience.
Member organizations present multiple awards to their nurses each year and new award categories have been added to reflect nursing’s changing role over the decades.
In addition to the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses (given out quarterly), there’s now a DAISY Nursing Team Award that recognizes the value of care teams. A DAISY Nurse Leader Award shines a light on the managers and other leaders who do extraordinary work but don’t typically have direct patient contact. View the full list of DAISY awards.
This year, another category was added: the DAISY Nurse Educator Award.
“One of the neat things the DAISY Foundation has done is expand,” Elgar said. “They don’t just honor frontline nurses — those nurses make up the bulk of the honorees — but they’ve expanded to honor exceptional educators, exceptional professors, exceptional nursing leaders. They honor all the others who support patients through the support of frontline staff or through engagement and training of the next generation of nurses.”
Chief nursing officer Denene Prophet-Williams, MBA, BSN, who recently joined Fred Hutch from Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, said the DAISY Award is a very big deal for nurses.
“Nurses all across the country feel joy and elation at being recognized by patients and patients' families,” she said. “It's such a prestigious honor to be recognized and appreciated for how you treat patients.”
She also highlighted the significance of the award starting at Fred Hutch.
“This award holds a special place within the fabric of nursing here at Fred Hutch,” she said. “Our connection with the Daisy Foundation runs deep as the Daisy Award for Extraordinary Nurses originated here. We're honored to have the Barnes family here today. And we’re very fortunate to have their support and guidance, as we carry forward Patrick’s memory. Knowing we cared for the patient who inspired the DAISY — and that the family was so grateful for everything that they put together an award to showcase the very best in nursing — really speaks volumes.”
The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nursing is given to nurses who demonstrate the following qualities, summed up by the apt acronym PETALS:
Elgar said many nurses at Fred Hutch — and beyond — are extremely grateful to the Barnes family for what they’ve done for the profession.
“All nurses know about the DAISY and about this amazing and thoughtful family,” Elgar said. “They are so appreciative of nurses and not just here in the states, but across the globe. I love how they’ve morphed and expanded the awards over the years, too. They’re still keeping the focus on nursing and on that touch between the nurses and the patients, but they’re thinking about all the ways that it’s supported.”
The family also continues to remind nurses of their invaluable role in society and in individual patients’ lives.
“We urge you to remember why you became nurses and to reflect on the tremendous difference you make every day,” Bonnie Barnes said in her video message. “Never to take this work for granted. Your communities are so fortunate to have your clinical skill and the healing connection you make with them.”
Diane Mapes is a staff writer at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. She has written extensively about health issues for NBC News, TODAY, CNN, MSN, Seattle Magazine and other publications. A breast cancer survivor, she blogs at doublewhammied.com and tweets @double_whammied. Email her at dmapes@fredhutch.org. Just diagnosed and need information and resources? Visit our Patient Care page.
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Are you interested in reprinting or republishing this story? Be our guest! We want to help connect people with the information they need. We just ask that you link back to the original article, preserve the author’s byline and refrain from making edits that alter the original context. Questions? Email us at communications@fredhutch.org
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