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Getting their Flowers: MTN Staff Earn a DAISY Team Award
The excitement in “We won a DAISY with WMC!!!!” says a lot.
In December 2023, a car accident sent Dwayne ‘D Dub’ Moenning to the emergency department at Wesley Healthcare in Wichita, Kansas. He was cared for by a Surgical Intensive Care Unit for about a week, but he passed away. Moenning’s family chose to donate their son’s organs. And they wanted his classmates to attend his honor walk. The school is more than an hour’s drive away.
MTN’s Impact
Midwest Transplant Network staff Midge Dempsey, Family Services Coordinator II, and Nikki Dixon, Hospital Services Coordinator II, served on the team that supported the Moenning family, and both made an impact.
Dempsey explained that when the time came to approach the Moenning family about donation, they struggled with the decision, but after conversation and explaining the organ donation process, they made the choice for their son to become a donor hero. Dempsey helped the family plan an honor walk and coordinated efforts to bring classmates and community members from their small town to the hospital.
Earning The DAISY Team Award
The DAISY Team Award is designed to honor collaboration by two or more people, led by a nurse, who identify and meet patient and patient family needs by going above and beyond the traditional role of nursing.
Wesley Healthcare presented The DAISY Team Award to a multidisciplinary SICU team that included partners and others who had an instrumental role in the Moenning’s story. The ceremony was held May 8, in the heart of National Nurses Week. (Continued on page 2)
“Earning a DAISY Team Award brings validation to my life and reminds me that I am following the path that has been paved for me. This award brings me joy because I know that I was able to provide someone with something they needed at a given time,” said Dempsey.
“Earning The DAISY Team Award as part of a hospital/MTN team is a blessing. We work very closely with the hospital team and winning an award together is a testament to that partnership,” said Dixon.
There’s another layer to the award for Dixon. “I spent my bedside nursing career in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Wesley, so this hospital is dear to my heart. I am very proud to serve Wesley as their MTN Hospital Services Coordinator. Organ donation saved my late father’s life twice, so I am honored to be part of this mission.”
About The DAISY Award
The DAISY Award was established by the family of J. Patrick Barnes in honor of the care he received after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease at the age of 33, in 1999. While he was hospitalized, his family “experienced the best of nursing.”
After Barnes died, his wife created the acronym DAISY — Diseases Attacking the Immune System — and the family created a not-for-profit organization, and The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses began at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance at the University of Washington Medical Center. The DAISY Award is described as “the first program of its kind to give patients, families, and co-workers a way to express their gratitude to nurses for what they became nurses to do — provide compassionate care to patients and their families.”
Learn more about The DAISY Foundation: daisyfoundation.org
