A few days ago, my wife gave birth to our first daughter at SJHMC. As first-time parents, we were naive and scared, made worse by a difficult labor course with a very perilous day for our daughter as she made her way down. In the early hours of the morning, after a long day and night spent laboring with minimal progression, things looked bleak. That’s when the first of two angels were sent to help us. A new nurse - Madison Green - was sent in after one was drawn away to another delivery. I can’t remember the exact number of times she rushed in, turned my wife, adjusted the fetal monitor, and worked tirelessly to fight for our baby, but it must have been in the dozens. When my wife was in pain, she made the difficult and courageous call at three in the morning to push for the doctor to allow an epidural at that stage in labor. As a physician myself, I know that it is because of nurses like her that many patients get the care they deserve. Without her, things would have taken a very different turn in the labor.

In the morning, after shift change, another angel appeared. She barged into the room unannounced and declared, “We are going to have this baby through your vagina!” It sounded strange, but that’s exactly what we needed at that moment. Because of persistent fetal decelerations, we were headed for a C section. But Maggie explained that she thought the baby was simply mal positioned and needed to be rotated a bit with a few pelvic twists. She brought in a “peanut ball” and single handedly turned my wife in the most contorted positions, all while explaining what they were doing to help the pelvis open up. It struck me as old fashioned nursing sense - taking the monitoring with a grain of salt and helping my wife with age-old wisdom. She explained that she became a devotee of the peanut ball because she went to a course, learned about pelvic anatomy and these techniques, and brought them back to her unit and became an advocate and educator for her fellow nurses. That is the definition of professionalism - taking your craft so seriously that you continually learn it and hone it and believe in it so much that you spread it to others. The gift of her efforts was our beautiful baby girl, born just a few hours later.

My wife remembers only bits and pieces of the experience, but I remember the work and devotion of these two nurses and their entire unit every time I look at our newborn daughter. As a physician, every time I see or treat another patient, I will seek to do so with the same professionalism and dedication as these two nurses and their colleagues. We frequently think it is grand gestures or fancy technology that change the world. But good nursing sense, care, persistence, and dedication - also change the world by changing even just one life.