McLeod Darlington nurse receives Palmetto Gold Award
McLeod Health is honored to announce that Chappel Timmons a Registered Nurse with McLeod Health Darlington was selected to receive the 2017 Palmetto Gold Award. Timmons was one of twelve McLeod Health Nurses to receive the award for 2017. They join the ranks of the 155 previous McLeod Nurses who have received this outstanding award.
The Palmetto Gold Award is a program that was started by various nursing organizations throughout South Carolina as a platform to recognize nursing, and support nursing education with scholarship funds.
Each year, employers from across a wide variety of South Carolina health care settings nominate outstanding nurses from their organizations to be considered as one of the 100 nurses honored with this prestigious award. The nominators are asked to provide evidence of how the nominee demonstrated excellence to the profession by addressing the following criteria: promoting and advancing of the profession of nursing; displaying of caring and commitment to patients, families, and colleagues and demonstrating leadership by assisting others to grow and develop.
This is a competitive process and usually several hundred nominations are submitted with only 100 being selected. Each year, the competition for the Palmetto Gold Nurse Recognition Program becomes more stringent. To select the 100 RNs, a team of six nurses from across the state participate in a blind review process. The nominees are not referred to by name or place of employment on the nomination sections seen by the judges so they are unaware of who they are or for which institution they work.
A registered nurse for five years, Timmons serves as a Clinical Nurse Manager for McLeod Health Darlington. She was nominated for this award by the hospital’s Chief Nursing Officer Lisa Page.
“Chappel is a huge asset to the nursing profession,” said Page. “In addition to serving on several committees she also helps with staff education. During her off hours, Chappel volunteers in our community providing nursing care to the free medical clinics. She also, for the past four years, has served as a volunteer staff camp nurse for a camp for chronically ill children. In addition to working full-time and her volunteer work, Chappel is pursuing an Advanced Nurse Practitioner Degree. We are so proud that Chappel was recognized for the excellent leader that she is.”
The recipients of the 2017 Palmetto Gold Award will be recognized at the Palmetto Gold Gala, April 22 in Columbia. To support the future of nursing, the proceeds from the Palmetto Gold Gala, are used to provide scholarships to each of the approved registered nursing programs in South Carolina. In 2008, the Renatta Loquist Graduate Nursing Scholarship was created to honor Mrs. Loquist, a member of the original Palmetto Gold committee and a leader in nursing in our state. This scholarship is for $2,000 and has been awarded each year. Since its inception, Palmetto Gold has awarded over $232,000 in nursing scholarships.