Nurse Cochran was making follow up discharge phone calls for the Mother/Infant units (4A/4B). She called one patient and proceeded with the given script, "Hi this is Nurse Cochran calling from Grady"...etc. Before she could finish the sentence the patient said, "I am in so much pain! My head and my back are killing me." Nurse Cochran asked her, still sticking to the script, "were you able to get your prescriptions filled yet?" She replied, "yes, but the pain medicine prescribed is not helping at all. You don't understand, the pain that I am having is so bad that I can't even hold, much less, breastfeed my baby. Thank heaven that my mom is here or I don't know what I would do, because I can't take care of my baby, the pain is just that bad." Nurse Cochran advised the patient to "get here now! As soon as you hang up this phone, you come right away to 4J Triage so that the doctor can see you." The patient stated that she would and the call ended.
The next day as Nurse Cochran was doing rounding on 4B, she arrived at the next room and recognized the name of the patient immediately since this was the patient she had spoken to the day before and told to come in. When Nurse Cochran walked in the room, she introduced herself and told her it was her she had spoken with on the phone. The patient said, "you know, you saved my life. If it hadn't been for you telling me to come right away, I could have had a stroke or worse." She went on to explain to Nurse Cochran that when she arrived to 4J, her blood pressure was so high that is was scary. While in the room, she noticed the patient was on Magnesium Sulfate therapy. The patient thanked her over and over.
Nurse Cochran was so overwhelmed and thankful that she had listened and followed directions to come to the hospital. Nurse Cochran shared with her Unit Director "sometimes we don't understand the benefit, or the importance of the things that we do, but this really made a difference in my life and fortunately the life of this patient."