In May, ajcjobs and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and will hold the seventh annual Celebrating Nurses event, where we will honor this year's 10 Nursing Excellence Award winners.
For several months, an independent panel of judges has read nominations sent in by patients, families and co-workers. There were more than 450 nominations this year – our largest pool ever.
You’d think that after seven years, we’d all know what nursing excellence looks like. Not so. Each year, I’m touched by the individual stories I hear and the nurses I meet through the awards. I’m always amazed at the unique ways nurses go above and beyond their job descriptions to care for patients.
This year is no exception. Nurses, it seems, have no trouble pushing the boundaries of excellence.
Does working almost around-the-clock for several weeks in a clinic in Kenya sound like your idea of a vacation? It does to one of this year’s winners, who knows her efforts are saving lives there.
Another nurse has taken her clinical skills and servant’s heart on medical mission trips to Guatemala, Haiti and Tanzania for 20 years.
A pediatric oncology nurse founded a charitable organization to send her young cancer patients and their families on vacation. She believes that giving them a respite from hospitals, needles and stress helps with healing.
Nursing excellence can mean helping a couple grieve after the loss of a baby. Or it can be finding a way to unite a cancer patient with his wife and their newborn baby in the hospital, so that all could receive care — and the once-in-a-lifetime experience of being a new family.
Years ago, a nurse practitioner told me that nurses don’t leave their skills at the door when they leave work. Thank heavens. Some of this year’s winners brought their skills and know-how to emergency situations on the highway, on a plane flight, at a softball game and while shopping at Kroger.
Excellence can be nurses doing what they regard as ordinary under extraordinary circumstances. Or it can mean doing the extraordinary: having the courage and compassion to donate a kidney to a young patient.
To find out who these special nurses are, pick up The AJC on April 29 and read our Celebrating Nurses special section. The section will include articles about the profession and profiles of all 10 winners.
We also invite you to come and applaud the winners when they are honored on May 2 during the Celebrating Nurses event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. The master of ceremonies will be Justin Farmer, Channel 2 Action News evening anchor. You’ll also hear a special performance by the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta employee choir.
To read about the 2012 winners and the awards program, visit our Celebrating Nurses page
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