DHEC would like to recognize our agency’s superb nursing staff during National Nurses Week, which is May 6-12. Together, we celebrate our public health nurses for embracing service, inspiring innovation, promoting teamwork and exhibiting excellence in nursing practice. Our nursing staff provide excellent patient care and are an integral component of all our public health initiatives. 

We also honor all of our nurses across the nation and state for their ongoing commitment to protecting the health and safety of our communities.

Helping to Lead the Fight Against the Spread of COVID-19

Our nurses have risen to the challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic – working tirelessly to ensure the public health needs of South Carolinians are met.

Highlights of nursing activities include:

• Triage consultation for entire state.
• Nursing and IT partnered to utilize innovative methods to move triage to a Sharepoint platform.

• Additional nursing staff hired and trained to assist with triage and contact investigations.
• Nursing staff provided expert training to fellow nurse coworkers to enable them to assume duties beyond their current positions.
• New nursing teams have been established to support our Epi staff including call centers, strike teams, and data entry teams, contact investigation teams, and weekend epi/lab teams.
• Nurses have sewn cloth masks for co-workers, volunteered for additional duties, and have been willing to assume supervisory and training duties. 

All of these activities and more are being done while maintaining program duties, continuing to see patients in the clinics, and checking on patients to assure their needs are met during this historic time.

Bringing Home the Gold

The highest award a South Carolina nurse can receive is the Palmetto Gold Award. Only 100 nurses are selected per year. 

It is an honor to announce that 14 of our DHEC nurses have been selected to receive the award this year at the Palmetto Gold Gala scheduled for September 26, 2020. These nurses display leadership and excellence in nursing practice. 

Recipients include:

Amy Painter	Debra Ray	Emily Way	Frances Hall	Marnie Johnson
Lynn Foster	Crystal Keith	Pat Barrett	Sheryl Gardner	Lindsay Odell
Shaniqua Alston	Debra Cain	Elizabeth Reynolds	Jennifer Donehue

Please joining us in thanking our nurses for the work they do throughout the year to help promote our shared vision of healthy people living in healthy communities.