The DAISY award

The DAISY Award is an international program that rewards and celebrates the extraordinary, compassionate and skillful care given by nurses every day. TriStar Centennial is proud to be a DAISY Award Partner, recognizing five of our nurses with this special honor quarterly.

DAISY Award honorees personify TriStar Centennial Medical Center's remarkable patient experience. These nurses consistently demonstrate excellence through their clinical expertise and extraordinary compassionate care. They are recognized as outstanding role models in our nursing community.

Each DAISY Award Honoree will be recognized at a public ceremony in her or his unit and will receive a certificate, a Daisy Award pin and a hand-carved stone sculpture entitled "A Healer's Touch." Additionally, everyone in the unit will celebrate with Cinnabon^® cinnamon rolls — a favorite of Patrick's during his illness. The Barnes Family asks that whenever and wherever nurses smell that wonderful cinnamon aroma, they stop for a moment and think about how special they are.

The DAISY Foundation was established in 1999 by the family of J. Patrick Barnes, who died of complications of the auto-immune disease Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura (ITP) at the age of 33. DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.

During Pat's 8 week hospitalization, his family was awestruck by the care and compassion his nurses provided not only to Pat but to everyone in his family. So one of the goals they set in creating a Foundation in Pat's memory was to recognize extraordinary nurses everywhere who make an enormous difference in the lives of so many people by the super-human work they do every day.