DAISY Award—Jennifer Owens
Jennifer Owens
Nomination: I am honored to nominate Jen Owens, Nurse Practitioner on the STEPS Pediatric Palliative Care Team, for the DAISY Award. Jen consistently embodies the deepest values of pediatric palliative care: presence, steadiness, exceptional clinical skill, and extraordinary compassion. She has a rare ability to support families through their most painful moments while guiding teams with clarity, integrity, and gentleness. Her recent care for a young father and his critically injured daughter exemplifies the very heart of the DAISY mission.
Our team was asked to support a family whose infant daughter suffered devastating brain injuries due to non-accidental trauma. From the moment we met her father, a very young parent who rarely left his daughter’s bedside for seven weeks, Jen created a space of safety and trust. He was overwhelmed with grief, anger, and disbelief. During our first encounter, Jen gently invited him to share his fears, worries, values, and hopes for his daughter. At the same time, she explored essential practical realities such as income insecurity, transportation barriers, his home environment, and his understanding of the complex medical information being presented. Her ability to hold his pain with tenderness while guiding him through difficult clinical conversations set the tone for the support that followed.
Throughout the hospitalization, Jen met with him almost daily, sometimes for brief supportive check-ins, and sometimes to provide updates, coordinate care, or answer questions. She led and organized multiple interdisciplinary family meetings, each of them emotionally intense and clinically complex. These meetings involved neurology, rehabilitation, critical care, social work, Child Protective Services, and eventually the father’s newly appointed foster family. Jen ensured that each participant was prepared beforehand and fully understood the information afterward. Her communication was compassionate, thorough, and grounded in patient- and family-centered care.
One meeting remains etched in all of our minds. When the neurologist explained the lifelong implications of the baby’s injuries, the young father broke down in tears. Jen paused the meeting and handed him tissues she always carries in her pocket. She created the emotional space he needed to process the unbearable truth he was hearing. Her leadership allowed the medical team to convey essential clinical information while preserving the father’s dignity and humanity.
Weeks later, in a final family meeting, the father shared his deepest grief, that he once dreamed his daughter would have a full and happy life, and that those dreams were no longer possible. He said he did not want her to suffer anymore and that his priority was her comfort. Jen guided him gently and expertly as he articulated these values. Many of us cried, including Jen, who balanced her own human emotion with professional clarity and compassion. Her guidance allowed this young father to understand that choosing comfort-focused care was an act of profound love.
In the days that followed, Jen carried the weight of the most difficult conversations, including informing the child’s mother, who was incarcerated. It was one of the most heartbreaking discussions I have witnessed, and Jen navigated it with extraordinary sensitivity, clarity, and respect.
As the child approached the end of her life, Jen provided ongoing support not only to the father but also to the doctors, nurses, and interdisciplinary staff caring for the child. She addressed symptom management and ensured that the plan of care aligned with the father’s goals. She also provided emotional support to clinicians who struggled with their own grief and moral distress. Her presence steadied everyone.
On the day the baby died, the father briefly stepped out for the first time in weeks. While he was gone, the child began to take her last breaths. Jen immediately called him, and while waiting for him to return, she held the baby in her arms as the child died, tears streaming down her face. When the father arrived, Jen placed his daughter gently into his arms and sat beside him as he wept, staying for as long as he needed.
The next day, the father called to thank her. He said he did not know how he would go on, that he was drowning in grief, but that Jen’ s presence made all the difference because he never felt alone. She was the person who cared for him in the darkest days of his life.
Jen’s care demonstrates the very essence of the DAISY Award: extraordinary compassion, exceptional clinical skill, family-centered advocacy, and a profound commitment to dignity. She transformed an unthinkable tragedy into a space where love, presence, and humanity could guide every step. For these reasons and so many more, I wholeheartedly and gratefully nominate Jen Owens for the DAISY Award at UC Davis Medical Center.
Submitters Name: Laura King, Spiritual Care Specialist