Last weekend, I was an inpatient attending the medical oncology service. I worked with an outstanding nurse practitioner, Brandy Boyle. As usual, the census was full, and we had many ill patients, many of whom were under the age of 50. We saw a young patient of Dr. R's who was 42 and had had what we thought to be an adrenal crisis from her immune therapy and infection/sepsis. The patient seemed to be recovering nicely, and we had a nice conversation with her and her mother. We stepped outside to go to the next patient, and five minutes later, the mother ran out of the room, saying her daughter had a seizure.

When we rushed in, we saw the daughter move and then stop breathing, and she had no pulse. We called the code, and Brandy immediately stepped into action, noted the time, began CPR, and began organizing the code. I got to watch from ringside seats from start to finish how expertly the team handled this emergency situation. The nurses (especially the charge nurse) swooped in, and by the time the code team came, which included anesthesia and ICU, the patient was getting high-quality CPR. She was without a pulse for 20 minutes, and within a total of 35 minutes from once she lost pulse, she was transferred to the ICU.

The patient did regain a pulse eventually and when I went later that afternoon to check on the patient, she was fully conscious, alert, and intubated. The ICU attending said she had excellent perfusion of her brain and was going to make it.

I can’t reiterate enough how impressive the dedication of the nurses, nurses’ aides, unit secretaries, hospitalists, and our NPs was. I am especially impressed by our oncology nurse practitioner, Brandy Boyle. Our patient is alive and has full brain function because of this team!

I don’t know what kind of kudos or praise we can give, but I thought you needed to know.

I was honored to be part of the team and so proud of our division of oncology and of our hospital! The patient and her family are over the moon thankful.