Award Nomination

Without any prompting or guidance, she began working to advance our hospital's perinatal bereavement program. In fact, our hospital is one of the leading facilities where the nursing staff create the memorial videos for the families experiencing perinatal loss.

In addition to this, she has worked hard at training other nurses to become sensitive to the needs of this unique patient population as well as training them how to "go the extra mile" and create memories for bereaved families while capturing these moments on photo to then present as a memorial video to them.

The response received from the families has been extraordinary and parents have been truly touched by this addition to our bereavement program.

She also decided that we, as a hospital, should demonstrate our commitment to the community and have an annual Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Ceremony each October (National day is on the 15th). She spearheaded this event and 2007 was our first annual ceremony which was very touching and appreciated by the community.

She is an advocate for this segment of our patient population and upon recognizing the lack of education & communication between the moment of learning that one's baby has died and then entering our Labor & Delivery unit (sometimes days) has created a patient education brochure that prepares patients and educates them on what to expect both during this time of waiting and especially when they get to the hospital to be induced.

Because of her passion for perinatal loss, she often does much of the work on her own time...whether it be purchasing clothes for the babies, making the memorial DVD's at home, using her own equipment to do it or staying after hours to hold the hand of a hurting parent, she has been giving 110% of herself to this worthy cause!

She has also prepared in-services for the emergency department in an effort to provide greater sensitivity to our patients experiencing early pregnancy loss (less than 20 weeks). She will also be presenting on perinatal loss at two national conferences this year and was asked to assist one of our physician offices with establishing and integrating more compassionate and helpful policies and procedures in regards to how they care for parents experiencing loss. She has also written and published an article in AWHONN's Lifelines about her experiencing caring for a patient who was a victim of sexual abuse.

The work that she has done on perinatal loss has been largely on her own & the title of "Bereavement Program Coordinator" was simply given to her because she saw a need and jumped in to make a difference! Most of the time, she is the CNC -- charge nurse of our Labor and Delivery unit. As the charge nurse, she is a tremendous patient advocate and always stands up for what she believes is right.

Laurie won the 2007 National Frist Humanitarian Award and is one the finalists for Nursing Spectrum's 2008 Excellence Awards Florida for community service.

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