Marlborough honors longtime nurse

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Marlborough honors longtime nurse
Screenshot/Courtesy UMass Memorial Hospital
Longtime Marlborough nurse Karen Buckley receives a certificate recognizing her years of work.

By Dakota Antelman, Managing Editor

MARLBOROUGH – Prominent Marlborough residents and health care professionals piled into a hallway at Marlborough Hospital, May 11, to recognize the long career of nurse Karen Buckley. 

More than 40 years after she started work as a licensed practical nurse, Buckley received the Daisy Lifetime Achievement Award to cheers, claps, and hugs from her family. 

Over the years, Buckley went on in her career to become a registered nurse.

“Every single person I’ve worked with deserves this award,” she said during the presentation. “But thank you all so much.”

The Daisy Award was created in the memory of Patrick Barns, a patient whose family was struck by the quality of care provided in their loved one’s final days. 

It remains a recognition of nurses who provide exemplary care over long careers of service to patients. 

Buckley, colleagues and former patients say, fits that description. 

“You put your patients way ahead of anything else that happens around you and your patients reflect on that,” UMass Memorial Health Care President and CEO Steve Roach told Buckley.  

Buckley received a special visit from family members who surprised her as the award presentation began. 

In addition to a formal lifetime achievement award certificate, she also received a hand carved “healer’s touch” statue from the Zimbabwe Tribe among other gifts. 

Marlborough Mayor Arthur Vigeant was also in attendance, delivering a speech and presenting Buckley with a city certificate of recognition.

“Karen and her family are what makes the fabric of this city of Marlborough,” he said. “It’s those types of people that keep things going and do all those kinds of special things.”

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