“Guardian Angel” nurse honored with DAISY Award

By J.O. Parker

​      Nekiah Halsted, RN, a UnityPoint Health-Grinnell Regional Medical Center float nurse team member, has been recognized with The DAISY Award. The award is part of the DAISY Foundation’s mission to recognize the extraordinary, compassionate nursing care that nurses provide patients and families every day.
      Halsted, who was working in the intensive care unit at GRMC, was surprised with an award presentation by her manager, team members and the patient who nominated her during Nurses’ Week, May 6 – 12.
     “I am over the moon to have received the Daisy Award,” said Halsted. “It means that I have provided outstanding care for a patient or their family, and I am honored to know that the patient who nominated me felt I was worthy of such an award. I spend my work days just loving and caring for my patients, and know that being a nurse was my calling. I could never see myself doing anything else.”
      Halsted is an 18-year veteran of the nursing profession who has been at Grinnell since January 2022. She was originally an employee of a travel company, but most recently joined the UPH Enterprise Float Pool.
     “I am a UPH employee but this position allows me to have set assignments throughout different regions, building my knowledge within communities of Unity Point,” noted Halsted. “I have loved my time here at Grinnell, they have an amazing establishment, and truly care for their employees, their patients and their families.”
      An excerpt from the patient nomination reads, "During my stay at GRMC, Halsted was my caregiver, voice of reason, communicator and patient advisor. Halsted was one of the best around-the-clock, finest nurses I had by my bedside, giving complete comfort and wonderful kindness. To me, Halsted is a guardian angel.”
     “Seeing the patient who nominated me and my team members standing there was surreal,” noted Halsted. “It truly inspired me and reminded me that what I do really matters. There will never be enough thank you’s for how grateful I am to GRMC and UnityPoint Health for giving me the opportunity to follow my passion in caring for others.”
     When asked what led her to entering the nursing field, Nurse Halsted said she had already previously been attending school, and had actually received her AA Degree in General Education. 
     “At the time, I was a single mother of two daughters, and decided that I would like to go back to school to earn my nursing degree,” she said. “My family is quite a medical family, and I for sure have my mom to thank for my love of nursing. She was an outstanding nurse, who took such good care of her residents. She was an inspiration.”
     “Halsted has been a huge asset to our GRMC team,” said Laura Juel, Vice President of Nursing & Clinical Services, RN, MSN, NEA-BC. “As a floating team member of UnityPoint Health, we are thankful that she has the skills, values and passion to serve our patients and communities in the way they deserve.”
      Currently, Grinnell is the only hospital where Halsted has worked as a float nurse. Prior to that, she spent 16 years in Marshalltown. She is a graduate of the nursing program at Marshalltown Community College.
     Halsted has lived in Marshalltown most of her life. She is a mother of six children, ages 23, 21, 18, 14, eight and four.
    “We are constantly on the go,” Halsted said of her and her family. “We love to go to the pool, baseball games, go the park, and do anything that entails us spending time together. I always say some day we will have just one day that we can stay home, and not have to go anywhere! Then of course, maybe that would be a boring day.”
      Once she finishes her assignment in Grinnell, Halsted will be going to Des Moines for her next assignment.
“I would just like the town of Grinnell to know what a gem of a hospital they have in their community, and that I have been blessed to be given this chance to spend my work days here,” said Halsted.
      The DAISY Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in memory of J. Patrick Barnes by members of his family. Barnes died in 1999 at the age of 33 from complications of an auto-immune disease. DAISY is an acronym for “diseases attacking the immune system.”