TORRANCE MEMORIAL RECOGNIZES THE SELFLESS CARE NURSES PROVIDE FOR PATIENTS
AND FAMILIES EVERY DAY
As part of the National Nurses Week (May 6–12) celebration, Torrance
Memorial Medical Center dedicated a Healer’s Touch Statue as a tribute
to its nurses. Nurses who receive the
DAISY Award receive a miniature version of the statue when they are honored each month.
The DAISY Foundation co-founders, Mark and Bonnie Barnes, were on hand
for the statue’s unveiling in the Torrance Memorial Auxiliary Healing
Garden. They shared their son’s story—the inspiration for
founding the organization. In 1999 at the age of 33, Patrick Barnes awoke
one morning with symptoms of an autoimmune disease after having survived
Hodgkins Disease twice. After eight weeks of hospitalization at the Seattle
Cancer Care Alliance, Patrick passed away. The extraordinary care he received
by nurses in the hospital prompted the Barnes to form The DAISY Foundation
(DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System) as a way
to say “thank-you for the gifts nurses give their patients and families
every day.”
Since then the award has been adopted by health care facilities across
the United States and beyond. The Healer’s Touch is a serpentine
stone sculpture, which has been hand-carved by artists of the Shona tribe
in Zimbabwe. The Shona people show tremendous respect to their traditional healers.