40 SoCal nurses awarded $10,000 each during ceremony recognizing their 'nursing greatness'

PICO-ROBERTSON, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Forty Southern California nurses were honored during a ceremony for their extraordinary care and compassion, and each of them received $10,000 as a reward.

The group of nurses - 10 each from Cedars-Sinai, City of Hope, UCLA Health and Keck Medicine of USC - were honored Wednesday night at the Museum of Tolerance. The Simms Mann Foundation funded the Off The Chart program, which rewards "nursing greatness" with the monetary prize.

"Not only do we get to celebrate nurses during National Nurses Month, but really recognize them for going the extra mile every day for our patients and their families," said UCLA Health President Johnese Spisso.

To win the prize, you can't enter yourself. Someone has to nominate you and it would be hard to find a more deserving profession.

Cedars-Sinai nurse Paul Diaz described the challenges that come with the job.

"Very demanding, long hours, you get yelled at, you get screamed at. You just have to be able to drop yourself to an emotional level, as if it was one of your family members... your mother, your father, your son, your kid," he said.

Nursing is also a profession that doesn't have enough people in it, and the nursing shortage could get worse. Estimates say nearly a fifth of nurses plan to leave the profession in the next three years.

"We're really having a nurse workforce crisis, which is really a health care crisis and so really, the health and safety of all of us is at stake," said Rachel Barchie, executive director of the Simms Mann Family Foundation.

That 1 in 5 statistic works out to nearly a million nurses nationwide. Wednesday's event aims to keep them in the profession. It was the third year of the event and organizers hope to keep doing it every year.

"Everything we do, we do it without any thought of having anything back and I feel like this was such a surprise and I loved it," said UCLA Health nurse Priscilla Luc.