McLeod Health is honored to announce that 14 McLeod Registered Nurses (RN) were selected to receive the 2024 Palmetto Gold Award. These nurses represent McLeod Regional Medical Center, McLeod Health Dillon, and McLeod Health Loris. They join the ranks of the 227 previous McLeod Nurses who have received this outstanding award.
The fourteen nurses from McLeod Health who received the 2024 Palmetto Gold recognition include: Leanne Allard, MSN, RN; Crystal Arnette, BSN, RN; Kasey Bustamante, DNP, BSN, RN, FNP-BC; Joni Butler, BSN, RN; Bambi Flowers, RN; Morgan Gray, RN; Eddie Hobbs, MA, BSN, RN; Eric Johnson, RN; Jennifer Lawson, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, CEN; Caleb Loveless, MSML, BSN, RN, CCRN, CENP; Kristen Miller, MSN, RN, CLS; Jennifer Rogers, BSN, RN; Nicole Spencer, MSN, RN and Pam Worthy, MSN, RN, OCN.
The Palmetto Gold Award was created by various nursing organizations throughout South Carolina as a platform to recognize nursing and support nursing education with scholarship funds.
Each year, employers from a wide variety of South Carolina healthcare 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 in the profession by addressing the following criteria: promoting and advancing the profession of nursing; displaying 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 nurses being selected. Each year the competition for the Palmetto Gold Nurse Recognition Program is more stringent. To select the recipients, a team of six nurses from across the state participated 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.
The recipients of the 2024 Palmetto Gold Award will be recognized at the Palmetto Gold Gala on April 27 in Columbia. To support the future of nursing, the proceeds from the Palmetto Gold Gala are used to provide scholarships to each registered nursing undergraduate program 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.
