DAISY Award

At MultiCare, we celebrate the extraordinary skills, compassion and the profound difference nurses make in the lives of our patients and their families with the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses.

The DAISY Award program began in 1999 and rewards exceptional patient care, superior clinical skills and remarkable compassion in nursing. It’s given to outstanding licensed nursing professionals in more than 2,000 health care facilities worldwide.

Use our nomination form to nominate a nurse for the DAISY Award.

Who may nominate a nurse for the DAISY Award?

Patients and their family members are typically the ones who nominate nurses for the award, although anyone who’s experienced a nurse providing extraordinary patient care may submit a nomination.

How is the DAISY Award winner honored?

Each DAISY Award winner is recognized with an award ceremony, a certificate, a DAISY Award pin for their badge, a hand-carved sculpture titled The Healer’s Touch from Zimbabwe, and a congratulations banner for their unit.

They share the honor with their unit colleagues in a celebration that includes cinnamon rolls, a favorite of Patrick Barnes, the young man whose family started the DAISY foundation to honor the extraordinary nursing care Patrick received during his protracted illness. The Barnes family invites nurses to pause whenever they smell cinnamon to appreciate just how extraordinary they are.

The DAISY Award story

“They truly helped us through the darkest hours of our lives, with soft voices of hope…”

Patrick Barnes was 33 when he was hospitalized in Seattle. He died eight weeks later from an auto-immune disease, leaving behind a four-month old baby, wife Tena, and parents whose grief was eased by the extraordinary nursing care their son received.

Bonnie and Mark Barnes were so moved by the compassion and caring they felt during their son’s last weeks, they created the DAISY Award™ for Extraordinary Nurses to honor nurses everywhere.

Hugs that we still feel. “As a patient family, we rather expected that Pat would have great clinical care. That was why he was in the hospital,” Patrick’s parents observed. “What we did not expect was the way his nurses delivered that care – the kindness and compassion they gave Pat and all of us in his family every day. We were awed by the way the nurses touched him and spoke with him, even when he was on a ventilator and totally sedated. The way they informed and educated us eased our minds. They truly helped us through the darkest hours of our lives, with soft voices of hope and strong loving hugs that to this day, we still feel.”

Please note that only one nomination may be made per nomination form. All MultiCare registered nurses (RN) are eligible.