I have had the pleasure of working with Joy on the inpatient psychiatric unit at PPMC for 6 years and at HUP Cedar for the past 1.5 years. Joy is the ultimate patient advocate, always going to bat for her patients to obtain needed medication for their comfort, symptoms of withdrawal, and agitation. Due to her diligence, I truly believe both staff and patients are much safer when she is working. When our unit at PPMC closed, we transitioned to HUP Cedar. Joy immediately saw the need to continue the shared governance model and started a unit council and is acting as the current chair. She was also able to advocate for the much-needed medical supervision of our psych population and was instrumental in getting NPs from HUP to round daily on psych to address medical concerns. This was lacking significantly before the transition.

In addition, she saw the lack of religious materials for our Muslim population and was able to get hundreds of Qurans donated to the inpatient psych units. Our patients have been extremely grateful for the materials, and satisfaction has increased.

Finally, Joy is working to develop a feedback forum to increase communication and documentation between multidisciplinary team members. Her constant and unyielding efforts to improve our underserved population are evident in everything she does, every day! She also simply cares! She meets her patients, learns their goals for treatment, and attempts to help them meet those individual goals every day. She is respectful and genuine, which may seem small but makes a huge difference to the psych population. It is for these reasons and countless more that I feel Joy is highly deserving of being recognized with the DAISY Award!!