I wanted to tell you how grateful I was to your charge nurse, Diane Gilreath last Friday. We had a patient who had transferred to us during the night because of heart rate issues. He had just had a TURP and despite CBI and medications, he was having bladder spasms and said he was in severe pain. I called Diane and she came down to help us. She spent 30-45 irrigating his bladder and problem solving with us while we called the urologist for his advice. He told us to remove the catheter if the patient insisted and Diane was there helping us to do that. We had problems removing the catheter and had to call the doctor again. Diane came back downstairs to help us again with attempts to remove it. At that point, I was in a code on another patient so Diane went so far as to call the urologist herself and talk to him about the situation. I had to speak with him again in the afternoon and he ended up coming in to see the patient in the early evening.
Diane was invaluable to us that day. We don’t get many patients on CBI and when we have, we haven’t run into the issues that we did that day. I was so appreciative of her taking time to come and help us out. She did that willingly and even asked me to call her back and let her know the outcome of the situation.
You are very fortunate to have a charge nurse who is as capable and competent as Diane is. I like to think of the charge nurses as working together as colleagues to bring our levels of clinical expertise to other areas of the hospital when that is needed. Diane certainly exemplified that collegial role on Friday. Her actions were of benefit to the patient which is our primary goal as nurses.