Garrett showed extraordinary compassion and dedication to all of MMC patient populations when he left his float satellite assignment to an on call nurse on a moment's notice and went to Labor and Delivery to translate for a French speaking patient that L&D had been struggling to communicate with for hours in the middle of the night.

Resources are always extremely limited on nights and L&D called me looking for anyone I knew who could speak French. They had attempted to use the translator phone many times with inadequate success and unable to get a MMC translator in to assist. They were desperate as the situation was getting more emergent by the minute. The other floats on the satellite quickly absorbed his assignment and he eagerly went over to help. Male float nurses are not trained in the east tower and all floats do not float to L&D but he understood the need to care for all of our patient population needs with special skill sets we each have and he headed off to the East Tower to see what he could do to help.

Garrett stayed with the patient for about two hours and this was likely life saving for the baby. When I went to check on L&D, during and after this time, several L&D nurses communicated to me the story of what had happened in that time. They had been struggling with the language barrier since the afternoon. As time went on the baby's life became increasingly in danger and the baby was having increasing number of dangerous heart rate decels. They needed him to explain a c-section. This patient was from Rwanda and was here alone and living in a shelter. Her husband and children were still in Rwanda and she had no support system and unable to understand any English. She was likely scared and unable to understand exactly how critical this situation was becoming.

Garrett first calmed her by the relief that there was someone she could understand. His bedside demeanor is a very relaxed and calming presence. Patients immediately love him. He didn't just come in and say what needed to be said but he formed a bond with her so that she trusted him as our patients trust their health care providers. He was able to explain to her the dangers and helped her agree to the C-Section. He then went into the C-section room with the patient (which may be uncharted territories for a float nurse) and spoke to her through the whole procedure. He also sat and held her hand the entire time giving her the caring comfort that comes with touch during this scary time for the patient. The patient told him that she didn't know anyone that had ever had a c-section. L&D nurses expressed their thankfulness that for a laboring mother with no support, he was kind, gentle, and compassionate and was her support person through the c-section. He both explained what was happening but was also just a supportive coach. The L&D staff also told me how thankful and amazed the OB was at the progress he made with the patient and made it possible for them to do their job.

The baby was born and able to go with his mom up to MBC unit as usual. The L&D nurses felt that without Garrett's help this baby likely would have gone to NICU as one of their most critically ill "ice babies" and have potential life threatening and permanent brain injury.

After that experience, Garrett popped right back into his assignment like he had been gone for 10 minutes. But I am sure he will remember this patient forever as she will remember him. He helped her have a healthy baby via a method that is not practiced in her culture and she hadn't known anyone who had had a baby with this method.