Award Type: DAISY Award

We want to recognize Sheena Helm for going above and beyond in her caring nature to our COVID-19 patient population. Sheena is a charge nurse and preceptor in the Medical ICU and had been caring for this difficult patient group since the pandemic arrived in Lubbock. She and her team have seen many difficult situations play out while their patients were isolated and afraid. Our patients remain on our unit for a long time, and we have found that we can FaceTime the patients’ families to allow them to remain connected. These patients remain “stuck” in the same environment, same room, same sounds, same caregivers that are covered from head to toe. The patients can not see any facial characteristics from anyone, aside from the occasional FaceTime call. For Sheena, she felt this was not nearly enough and wanted to do more for our patients. Sheena decided to reach out to our loving community via social media. She was requesting items for inpatient care baskets that would include items to help bring a bit of happiness to her patients. Her goal was to help make the hospital visit a little more like home and provide activities for the patient to help occupy themselves during isolation. The response was huge as her post was shared numerous times, and even led to her sharing her mission with a local new station! She had many donations coming in and encouraged the community to help make signs for our patients, which we placed in every patient room. Sheena used her time away from the unit to collect the donations and start organizing them to bring to the hospital. She even had to rent a storage unit to store it all. Even though the response was huge, Sheena began thinking that she could grow the donations beyond the Medical ICU. She started thinking and she could provide additional support to the rest of the patients at UMC, and maybe even send some to other hospitals. On her time off, Sheena began going to other stores and asking them if they care able to donate anything for the COVID patients. Sheena bought bins for all the COVID units in our hospital, and she has been replenishing those bins with the donations she has collected. Some of these donations went to fill Christmas stockings that UMC passes out throughout the organization. 

We are proud to honor Shenna Helm as our April 2021 DAISY Recipient!

Please help us congratulate Erica West as our February 2021 DAISY Nurse!

Erica works in the NICU and went above and beyond for one of the families going through an extremely difficult time. The family had given birth to a set of premature twins and unfortunately the family lost one of the twins. During the time of the families mourning the family was diagnosed with COVID and had to leave their premie son to quarantine and would be unable to return for 14 days. The diagnosis of the family was sudden and unexpected and mother of the baby left all her pumping supplies at the hospital not knowing she would be unable to return for two weeks. Erica understood the importance of getting the mother her pumping supplies and without hesitation took it upon herself to offer to drop of the supplies to the family. Erica showed this family so much compassion and left the family feeling hopeful as mom could continue to pump and do what she could to remain a part of his care even with being separated for two weeks. Not only did Erica take her own time to deliver the mother with more than enough supplies to last the entire two weeks, but she also had pictures made so the family could see how much their son had grown and how healthy he was after not having been able to see him for 5 days at this point. Thank you, Erica, for representing UMC and providing the family with some happiness and easing their minds during this hard time. This act of kindness was so selfless and not only did Erica take great care of their son she took care of the entire family.
 
We are proud to honor Erica West as our February 2021 DAISY Recipient!