10/02/2025
Meet Migdalis Perea-Fraser, one of our recent Heart Award ❤️ recipients!
Migdalis is a security officer at Ellis Medicine, and she consistently brings her heart to work. Thank you, Migdalis, for all you do to help care for our community and colleagues. See her nomination below!
"Our security officers at Ellis Medicine very often go above and beyond for both the well-being of staff and our patients. It is commonplace that our they develop positive relationships with our patients and become essential members of the patients’ team.
Officer Migdalis (Mig) does so consistently and compassionately. Often encountering patients who are experiencing some sort of trauma or crisis, Mig offers compassion and respect in a way that effortlessly gains the trust of our patients.
Earlier this year, my director and I were providing a tour of the emergency department, with focus on Care Team 5, to an outside consultant. While doing so, Mig was seen in the day room playing cards with a patient. This patient was experiencing a mental health crisis and could quickly become elevated and had been quite elevated and agitated moments before. Mig had previously established a positive rapport with this patient, was able to quickly de-escalate the situation, and took time out of her day to sit with this patient and play cards with them until they were calmer and feeling better.
This is something that was of no surprise to me, as this is a typical interaction for Mig. However, the consultant touring the care team was visibly shocked, and asked if that was a security officer playing cards with a patient. When I confirmed it was, the consultant noted how “amazing” that was, and that in her many years of working in hospitals, she has never witnessed an interaction like that and would not expect to.
The impact Mig has while interacting with patients experiencing an incredibly difficult time is profound. It is more profound that is such commonplace that I did not initially appreciate the significance and was reminded of it by someone visiting Ellis."
