Recommendation letter guidelines and best practices

¶ … letter to personally recommend Ms. ____ as a nursing assistant for your organization. ____ is a qualified, experienced and a well trained applicant. She has worked as a Nursing Assistant under my supervision in ____ organization for ____years, during which I found her to be very professional in her field and tackling all issues with calmness and smile on her face.

As a nursing assistant her duty was to take care of the Developmentally Disabled patients in a residential setting by providing comfort and performing following activities of daily living (ADL):

1) to provide personal care activities which included; bathing, grooming, dressing, eating, hydrating, toileting and exercising.

2) to prevent infection control by isolating the client infections through hand washing, careful handling of contaminated objects, isolation procedures and reporting the environmental situations that might spread infection.

3) to ambulate clients which include; to lift, move and transport residents from one position to another and from one facility to another.

4) to maintain or regain the normal range of motion and body strength and helping patients in doing physical exercises in order to maintain the musculoskeletal function and general well being.

A2

I have supervised many assistants but I must say that ____ is not an ordinary person but is very mature and perfectly professional. I have never heard any complaints regarding her attitude and behaviour from any patient or staff member. Indeed I have always observed her talking nicely with all staff members and obeying seniors. She has good understanding with all team members due to her ability to listen to others and understand their point-of-view. I have never seen her quarrelling with any staff member or doing anything which creates problem for me.

A3

____ is a very hardworking and dedicated nurse who is very honest with her job and takes special care of the patients. She not only performs her duties but also do extra work by taking care of the diet and cleanliness of the patients. She has ability to handle patients and motivate them to eat proper diet and take required medicines. She honestly performs all her duties and takes the responsibility of all her jobs. Her calm personality helps her to tolerate the irritating attitude of patients and mold their attitude by giving them love and affection. For instance, if a patient does not want to take medicine and shout at her, she will keep tolerating and motivating him sweetly in sympathy, which ultimately forces the patient to listen to her and take medicine.

A4

Managing diversity at healthcare places is a challenge since different patients have different values and perspectives regarding different variables like lifestyle, gender, age, handicaps, culture and sexual preference. However, I have observed that ____ knows well how to meet this challenge. I have seen that she handles different patients differently due to their preferences, culture or religion.

For example, once I noticed that two old ladies belonging to different cultures were discussing the system of celebrating a certain event. They both got hyper while discussing it and could have harmed each other if ____ would not have stopped them on the right time. She listened to both of them and cooled down them by accepting that they both were right at their place. However, she told me later that she wanted to take side of one lady which belonged to her own community and was telling the right way of celebrating the event but at the same time she also remembered well that her duty is to take care of all patients equally and not to get herself attached by creating diversity among them.

____ can deal with all types of populations that have different age groups and belong to different cultures. She has ability to mold herself accordingly and stay calm even if the patient says anything against her. She considers all patients equal and therefore treats all of them with same attention and care.

A5

____ very much takes care of the values, beliefs, attitudes and emotions of the patients. She is very sensitive by nature and therefore can feel the pain of patients and understand their problems. Therefore she plays an active role in supporting the patient as well as his family to cope with the problems, especially in the emergency situations.

Her pleasing personality attracts everyone at the work place and she also makes extra efforts to make her patients smile. For instance, I remember how she celebrated birthday of an old patient by bringing a cake and decorating the room, just to make him feel good. Her effort was not only appreciated by the patient himself but all other patients also enjoyed the party and forgot about their pain and problems for few moments.

She always remembers the anniversaries and birthdays of the patients and make sure that she wishes them and make arrangements to celebrate it in the hospital. Her enthusiastic attitude and liveliness plays a significant role in helping patient to recover faster.

A6

One of an important trait that____ possess is her ability to solve the problems. There is not a single but several cases in which she helped me and other staff members in resolving the issues and problems.

For instance, a critical situation arose few months back when I was very much stressed at work and a child case came to me for assessment. ____ was also with me and helping me in examining the child. The child had several severe infections and was in real bad condition. One appearing reason behind his illness was his dirty hands and clothes. It seemed that his mother did not take proper care of his cleanliness. I was already stressed out so I straight away said to his mother that you are responsible for your child's illness and you do not take care of your child.

Mother of the child didn't say anything to me but went to the administration directly and complained about my attitude and throwing responsibility of child's illness on her. I got a threatening email from administration office and was asked to report immediately. I was already in a bad mood and would have created a mess there but ____ stopped me from going there and went herself to inform them that I was not well.