AACN, GE Healthcare to honor DAISY Foundation with Pioneering Spirit Award

The DAISY Foundation will receive the AACN-GE Healthcare Pioneering Spirit Award to honor its efforts to provide meaningful recognition to nurses as "unsung heroes" deserving of society's profound respect and recognition for their education, training, brainpower, skill and compassion.

The award, from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and supported by GE Healthcare, will be given at the 2012 National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, Orlando, Fla., May 19-24. This AACN Visionary Leadership Award recognizes significant contributions that influence high acuity and critical care nursing and relate to the association's mission, vision and values.

The parents of J. Patrick Barnes established the DAISY Foundation — an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System — in 2000 to honor the spirit of their son, Pat, who died of the autoimmune disease idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) at the age of 33. The family wanted to keep Pat's very special spirit alive and recognize the skillful and amazingly compassionate care he received, even while he was sedated, from the nurses over his eight-week hospitalization. The primary mission of the DAISY Foundation is to express the family's gratitude to nurses for the work they do for patients and families every day.

The foundation's initiatives to thank the nursing profession include the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses honoring bedside nurses in nearly 1,000 institutions across the country; the J. Patrick Barnes Grants for Nursing Research that fund projects by nurses who continually evaluate and change their practice based on evidence; and DAISY Faculty Awards that honor nursing faculty in more than 50 schools of nursing for their commitment and inspirational influence on their students.

Since its inception, the DAISY Foundation has consistently taken the lead in meaningful recognition of more than 16,000 nurses for their exceptional work to deliver competent and compassionate care to patients and their families.