Dacha DeGruy

Dacha DeGruy is a registered nurse in New Orleans, Louisiana, with experience in emergency, psychiatric, and community-based nursing. Her work centers on patient assessment, medication administration, crisis response, patient education, and coordinating care with the rest of the treatment team.

DeGruy is an emergency room nurse at University Medical Center (UMC) in New Orleans.

There she performs timely assessments, monitors patients who arrive with urgent and emergent conditions, administers prescribed medications, starts IV access, and provides nursing interventions based on patient needs and provider orders. She works alongside emergency department staff to coordinate treatment, document care, and support safe patient transitions.

She is also a psychiatric nurse with START Corporation, where she provides community-based psychiatric nursing as part of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team. She meets clients face to face, monitors mental health symptoms, and documents progress in SOAP notes. She administers prescribed medications, including long-acting injectable antipsychotics, watches for adverse reactions, and teaches clients about medication adherence, coping strategies, and symptom management. She also works with the interdisciplinary team on crisis intervention, follow-up care, and connecting clients with community resources.

Her earlier nursing roles include emergency room nursing at Tulane Medical Center from 2024 to 2026, where she assessed and stabilized incoming patients and coordinated transfers and discharge care, and psychiatric nursing at Beacon Behavioral Health Services from 2024 to 2025, where she gathered information from patients and families to support individualized treatment plans and provided outreach, advocacy, rehabilitation, and crisis support.

DeGruy's path into nursing started at the bedside. She worked as a med/surg CNA at Ochsner Baptist beginning in 2016, then spent more than six years as a CNA with UNI Agency, helping patients with daily living, mobility, and comfort while monitoring and documenting vital signs and changes in their condition.

She earned her Associate of Science in Nursing from Charity School of Nursing in New Orleans in 2023.