Local nurses win award

by Rob Benneian

Two local nurses have taken a rare step into the limelight by winning an international award.

Debra Bezaire and Heather Brown, who work at Windsor Regional Hospital, were announced as co-winners of the DAISY Award, which stands for Diseases Attacking the Immune System. According to The DAISY Foundation website, the award “honours the super-human work nurses do for patients and families every day.” More than 1,000 health care facilities are involved with the DAISY Award, which is presented bi-annually.

The DAISY Foundation was started by the family of Patrick Barnes, who in November 1999 lost an eight-week battle in hospital with the autoimmune disease idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura. Twice a survivor of Hodgkin’s Disease, Barnes died at the age of 33 from ITP, which is the condition of having an abnormally low platelet count in one’s blood.

Bezaire has been a nurse for nearly 36 years and was nominated by Kari Lynn Malec, the manager of the inpatient rehabilitation unit at the Tayfour campus at Windsor Regional Hospital. She said she decided to become a nurse when her grandfather Peter Bratt was stricken with cancer.

“I see every day people come in so compromised and to see them walk out is extremely gratifying,” Bezaire said. “Not being able to talk, not being able to walk, not being able to wash their face, things that we take for granted. That’s what our program does, it helps them to get back home, to get them back to their families and spend quality time with them.”

Brown, who works in the family birthing centre at the Metropolitan campus, had many options when she decided to pursue a career in nursing. She had applied to a veternary program, but chose to take care of people instead of animals.

“It’s a very personally gratifying career choice for me,” Brown said. “I was shocked (to be nominated for the DAISY award). I work with so many tremendous nurses, people who are much more senior than me who have been doing this forever who are all deserving of an award. To be chosen amongst them was suprising and humbling.”

Brown said the DAISY Awards are a “wonderful idea” because nurses are generally under-appreciated.

She and Bezaire were presented with a service pin, a hand-carved sculpture known as A Healer’s Touch and a box of Cinnabons at a ceremony Nov. 20.

“When Pat was sick, he wouldn’t eat anything at all. I brought a Cinnabon in one morning for myself and he asked for a bite of it and he proceeded to eat the whole thing,” said Barnes’s father Mark, who co-founded The DAISY Foundation. “That night when we left he said, ‘Please bring me one in the morning and make sure you bring enough for all the nurses.'”