Ashley Gairdner
November 2022
Ashley
Gairdner
,
RN
CVICU
Mercy Health St. Vincent's Medical Center
Toledo
,
OH
United States

 

 

 

Ashley and her persistence in standing up for her patient and what she knew he needed saved J's life.
We would like to nominate Ashley Gairdner who helped us at Mercy Health St. Vincent Cardiac unit (CVICU). J was admitted while having a “STEMI” heart attack and had an emergency stent procedure to unblock the LAD. The next two days J's troponin and pain levels were all over the charts and he was early on diagnosed with pericarditis. Overnight Wednesday his pain levels topped out at 10 but nothing changed treatment-wise. After shift change and rounds Ashley was unsatisfied with the status quo and she felt J needed to get back down to the cath lab for a look around. She marched on up to the Cardiology office and advocated for this. The cardiologist agreed and later that day J went down for what ended up being a life-saving procedure. A kink had formed in between the original stents which needed bolstering and the distal end of the artery had fully clogged again with blood clots which was either an ongoing heart attack or would have caused another major attack soon. Ashley and her persistence in standing up for her patient and what she knew he needed saved J's life. We are so grateful to have had Ashley on this day when she made such a lasting impact on our lives. Thank you, Ashley.