Recently, I was the charge on IMCU and Emily floated to us. I have worked with Emily a few other times when she has floated to our unit and Emily is always great to work with. She always comes with a smile and a positive attitude and she is very independent and a strong nurse, so I never have to worry about her or her patients. She always calls when she needs help and asks questions when she doesn't know something. This particular day Emily was taking care of a patient on BIPAP, admitted with severe pneumonia and did not seem to be improving at all and pretty dependent on the BIPAP. The patient was not very old and Emily was worried when she tried to titrate the oxygen and take the patient off BIPAP and the patient did not tolerate it and wasn't doing well. Emily's gut instinct knew something wasn't right. Right away she started paging the on-call doctor and advocating for the patient and the things the patient needed like an EKG and echocardiogram, labs, etc.
Emily's cardiac experience led her to believe that something more serious was going on with this patient. Then right away, after she got the echo order, she called the tech and asked that the patient be bumped to the top of the priority list due to concern for serious things. The echo tech came right away and did the echo. And the echo showed some serious abnormalities and the doctor needed to be paged right away for an urgent cardiology consult and then emergent care needed for her. The patient needed emergent cath lab interventions. She had to be intubated at the bedside on IMCU before going to the cath lab and Emily was calm and handled everything like a champion nurse she is. She called for the people and resources she needed and kept me, as the charge, involved and informed the entire time. Emily was also so amazing with keeping the patient calm and informing her and her family of everything that was happening through the whole thing. The patient ended up with a balloon pump/LVAD and urgent open-heart surgery and was in CVCU for a week or more, but because of Emily, the patient is alive today.
Most IMCU nurses would have known she was not doing well and RRT and possible ICU transfer worthy but not have the everyday solid cardiac knowledge and experience to know that there could be more going on with the patient than just pneumonia. The patient had no prior cardiac history to make you think it was cardiac. Emily went above and beyond to get what her patient needed. She is an amazing critical care nurse with great critical thinking skills. I learned from her this day and I have been a nurse longer than she. I asked her afterward what it was that made her think there was more going on and she explained that in CVCU when patients can't come off BIPAP the first thing you think of is valve/atrium/heart attack issues. Because of her quick thinking and great knowledge base, she saved this woman's life. We save lives around here every day but this situation stood out to me.
Emily is a solid person, woman, and nurse and I am blessed to know her and to be peers with her. She can care for any of my family any day and I would know that they would be in great hands. Emily showed compassionate care in this situation and truly exemplary service. She seeks to improve more and learn more and increase her knowledge base to care for her patients. She definitely displays the continued commitment to excellent patient care and excellent patient outcomes. The patient was very lucky to have Emily as her nurse this day. It was like Emily was sent here for a special purpose that day, to intervene and save this woman's life. CVCU, and our hospital is lucky to have nurses like Emily who strongly advocate for what they feel is right and take their profession seriously and love what they do.