DAISY Award Honoree - Alex Grzegorczyk

It’s time to highlight the first DAISY Award honoree of 2025! This recognition is given to nurses who go above and beyond to serve our patients.  
  
Today, we are featuring Alex Grzegorczyk, an RN in our Med-Surg Pulmonary unit. Alex was nominated by a fellow nurse for showing true compassion, especially when caring for a patient at the end of their life.
 
“I’ve precepted a lot of nurses, and I know that on a Med-Surg floor it is so easy to become task oriented with the pressures of time and task lists driving your every move. Especially as a new nurse, coming into our world is daunting, and trying to prioritize everything is something that takes time to learn. This so often becomes the role in which we fall into, forgetting the reasons we went into patient care in the first place, feeling the weight of inadequacy heavily on our backs. But, Alex, she has the kind of compassion that sometimes gets snuffed out in the workflow, that fresh and fervent heart that shapes her routine, and she takes the kind of time with her patients that makes each one feel seen, heard, and validated. An example that was the first of many: I knew she was going to be an amazing nurse when we had a patient that was at the end of life - high anxiety, low oxygen reserve, and needed a lot of reassurance throughout the day to focus on slowing down their breathing to keep oxygen saturations up. Multiple times that day I saw her stop what she was doing, get down on her knees, and breathe with that patient. She spoke words of encouragement, compassion, and love to that patient. She kept them calm, reassured, and feeling safe in their last days of life. I know she carried it with her long after they were gone. Alex has continued to show that kind of love and compassion to each and every one of her patients. Her steadfast love of other humans is the standard to which we should all hold ourselves to daily. Compassion is something that cannot be taught, and when we have a nurse like Alex come along that perfectly embodies our values of respect, integrity, compassion, and safety, their praises should be sung from the mountain tops. I am a better nurse for working alongside people like Alex, and I know her patients are better, too.” 

The nominator also left the nomination with a quote – we'd like to leave you with it, too. 

“Light begets light, and love begets love.”