I had a TIA at my home in Laramie; my sister took me immediately to a nearby facility. Although the ER doctors wanted to ambulance me to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center that night, 1-80 closed due to winter weather conditions and I spent the night in their ER. The following morning, an ambulance transported me to Cheyenne Regional where I was immediately admitted to a room with Meghan as my nurse for the day. Meghan introduced herself and her pleasant and efficient manner helped to relax me as I was quite shocked and flummoxed to find myself checked into a hospital for only the third time in my life and I'm 68 years old! She also explained in understandable terms, which is often not the case, the tests and procedures I would be having that day so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Meghan pretty quickly made a couple of funny remarks that made me laugh and I immediately appreciated her good sense of humor, especially in the midst of my own feelings of doom and gloom following the TIA. She was smiling, conscientious, and attentive to any needs or requests I had. I believe you can tell a lot about a person when you see how they treat those they work with and I observed her treating her CNA and all those she interacted with as equal members of a team directed toward patient care and comfort.
Meghan's shift with me ended the first day at 6 pm or so but I was very happy to see her back as my nurse the next morning. As we had become acquainted the day before, we had a chance to talk a bit (until it got VERY busy). I was released from the hospital that day around noon so my last interaction with Meghan was as she wheeled me downstairs and we said goodbye. Although I myself have very little experience as a hospital patient, I have spent many hours and days in various hospitals around the country where my elderly parents were patients, and have observed numerous nurse/patient interactions, the good, bad, and ugly. So, I consider myself a fairly competent judge, at least from an outsider's point of view, of good to excellent nursing and I believe Meghan belongs in the latter category. Her obvious intelligence is certainly an asset to her exemplary nursing and people skills. Meghan is a young yet very mature nurse (I was surprised just how young) with a bright future ahead of her in the health care industry. Cheyenne Regional Medical Center should be proud of her and hope she continues her nursing career with the organization.