Members of the oncology nursing team from HUP Pavilion 11 Campus with the Team Daisy Award.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Courtney Crawford entered the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) for a life-saving stem-cell transplant to treat acute myeloid leukemia. She would have no visitors for the next four weeks, not even her 9-month-old son.
On her darkest days, she writes, there was “a bright beacon of hope”: her oncology nurses, especially her primary nurses, Nancy Roney BSN, RN, OCN, and Amelia Karlin, MSN, RN, OCN. Roney would tuck Crawford’s blanket around her at night, like her mom did when she was little, and Karlin would hold her hand and ask about her baby. It felt like she was their only patient.
“Without their steadfast nursing skills, their extraordinary care, and at the most personal level their empathy and compassion as human beings,” Crawford wrote, “I don't know how I would have experienced my ‘rebirth’ as a transplant patient.”
Members of the oncology nursing team from HUP Pavilion 14 Campus with the Team Daisy Award.
Citing Crawford’s testimonial and others, HUP Chief Nursing Executive Colleen Mattioni, DNP, MBA, RN, CNOR, and the Professional Development Core Council awarded the 2021 Team DAISY award to the hematology/oncology/bone marrow transplant nursing team formerly located on Rhoads 7, now on 14 Campus and 11 Campus in the Pavilion.
The DAISY awards, adopted at HUP in 2009, recognize nurses who provide above-and-beyond compassionate care. Nominations can come from patients, family members, or staff. In addition to monthly awards for individual bedside nurses, HUP selects an annual team award for a group of nurses who collaborate to help a patient and/or family member.
“We are so incredibly proud of our group of empathetic, innovative, and dedicated nurses, CNAs, and secretaries,” said Theresa Gorman, MSN, RN, the hematology/oncology/bone marrow transplant team’s clinical nurse specialist.
Two oncology patients participated in the nursing team’s own version of the October Blue Cross Broad Street Run.
This is the same team that hosted their own version of Philadelphia’s 10-mile Blue Cross Broad Street Run in October after hearing that a patient with multiple myeloma was disappointed to miss the annual road race.
“We really do have an amazing teamwork ethic on both of our floors, which is really the foundation that allows us to provide this great care,” said Assistant Nurse Manager Jillian Tuzio, MSN, RN.