The Surgical Care Unit had a 3-year-old, vibrant little oncology patient that absolutely loved dinosaurs. He would walk around the unit and growl, "scaring" all the staff on the unit. Ginger Winder, our nurse manager, went above and beyond for our little patient.
As a manager, Ginger is very engaged with our patients. You can often find her holding a little one or entertaining other children. For this patient, I was amazed by my manager and I feel I would never see another manager go this far to make a patient just simply smile. Ginger had a dinosaur costume she had brought for another event. The patient saw her in this costume and was immediately in love. Ginger proceeded to walk the entire 5th-floor multiple times as our patient introduced Ginger as his "friendly Tyrannosaurus Rex". They went around "scaring some of the nurses" and playing with some of the other kids on the unit. This made our patient and his parent's day!
Not only did Ginger do this for our patient once, she proceeded to do this act of compassion for our patient three times that week. Each time walking multiple laps with our patient and making him smile bright each time. When she would take the costume off she would be drenched in sweat, yet she did this for him three times. When she took the costume off, I felt like her smile was just as big as the patient's! Our patient was so proud to show off his "friendly T-rex" to everyone. I see nurses on SCU and throughout the hospital do amazing things for our patients every day, but to see my manager take time out of her busy day 3 times in one week to make this patient smile amazed me and I believe she deserves The DAISY Award.