Good Samaritan Society-Waukon nurse receives DAISY Award


Recipient of DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses at Good Samaritan Society - Waukon ... Kayla Rowan (center) of Lansing is pictured above with the DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses she received in a ceremony held at Good Samaritan Society - Waukon April 13. She was presented the award by Good Samaritan Society - Waukon Administrator Steve Bargar (left in above photo) and Director of Nursing Lori Johnson (right). Photo submitted by Good Samaritan Society - Waukon.

Kayla Rowan of Lansing was awarded “The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses” at a presentation held Wednesday, April 13 at the Good Samaritan Society - Waukon. Rowan, a licensed practical nurse (LPN) serving residents at the Waukon facility, was presented the award by Good Samaritan Society - Waukon Executive Director Steve Bargar and Director of Nursing Lori Johnson.

Rowan’s award represents a national honoring for the Good Samaritan Society for the first quarter of 2022. She was selected from nurse-nominees from over 200 locations. “Kayla is a caregiver and leader in the community, with her family and at Good Sam,” facility leaders shared. “We are so proud of her and so blessed to be her teammate.”

With the award, Rowan was also presented a stone sculpture hand-carved for Good Samaritan Society by the Shona Tribe in Zimbabwe. The serpentine stone sculptures hold special meaning because of the profound respect the Shona people pay their traditional healers. Shona healers are regarded as treasures by those they care for, and the well-being and safety of the healer is of community-wide importance.

The DAISY Award for Extraordinary Nurses was established around the year 2000 by the family of Patrick Barnes, a 33-year-old husband and first-time father who had survived Hodgkins Disease twice before being diagnosed with the auto-immune disease ITP (Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura). The award was a product of the family’s establishment of the DAISY Foundation, with DAISY standing for Diseases Attacking the Immune SYstem.

The Foundation, and more specifically the DAISY Award, are focused on ensuring that “nurses know how deserving they are of our society’s profound respect for the education, training, brainpower and skill they put into their work, and especially for the caring with which they deliver their care,” according to the Foundation’s mission.

Prior to Patrick’s passing, the Barnes family was able to spend eight weeks with him in the hospital, witnessing first-hand the care he received from the hospital nursing staff and being very moved by the way that care was presented, not only to Patrick but also to his family members.

“We expected that Pat would have great clinical care; that was why he was in the hospital,” the family shared. “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.” The family established the DAISY Award as their way to “say thank you for the gifts nurses give their patients and families every day, just as we had experienced.”