July 2024
Dawn M
Stout
,
RN
Oncology
VA Northern Indiana Health Care System
Fort Wayne
,
IN
United States
When a patient comes in who is not assigned to Nurse Stout but whom she has previously treated, she always makes time to catch up with them.
I am a Veterans Administration patient and have been dealing with Cancer since 2020. I have going through Chemo since 2021. My Chemo unit has 6 stations all in a large room and we can all see each other. There are three Chemo nurses and they are assigned patients randomly. All of the nurses are competent and caring. Nurse Stout goes the extra mile in a number of ways. She engages with her patients and talks to them in prolonged conversations. She gets them to talk about themselves and is willing to talk about herself. I've never seen her fail to put a smile on her patient's face. I've frequently seen her hold a patient's hand even hug them. She'll take selfies with them. There is a rack of magazines for patients that I associate with Nurse Stout; also a tray full of stances that I have only seen Nurse Stout pass around to the patients. When a patient comes in who is not assigned to Nurse Stout but whom she has previously treated, she always makes time to catch up with them. I've seen many dozens of nurses since entering the VA in 2016. Nurse Stout is the one that continuously demonstrated a willingness to go the extra mile to have a happy patient.