Susan Stephens
July 2021
Susan
Stephens
,
RN
Cardiothoracic ICU
Tampa General Hospital
Tampa
,
FL
United States
Susan let my husband and I exchange and communicate “I love yous” over the phone. I appreciated this immense amount of empathy, kindness, caring, and just being an overall wonderful person.
Susan was our nurse the first night after my husband’s double lung transplant. She was kind, welcoming and made me feel confident that he was getting great care. She was also there when he was getting ready to be extubated for the first time and did a great job reassuring my husband and me during the wake-up process. Over the course of a few days, my husband had to be intubated and extubated a couple of times before finally ending up with a tracheostomy because of complications. On one evening when I could not be there with my husband because of the hospital visitation policy, Susan was the Charge Nurse and knew what a roller coaster we were having and how stressful it had been. She knew how much I wanted to be called if there were any changes or issues. She took the time to call me when they were putting the cpap on to see if it would improve my husband’s breathing and again shortly after when it was evident that he needed to be intubated again. She let my husband and I exchange and communicate “I love yous” over the phone. I appreciated this immense amount of empathy, kindness, caring, and just being an overall wonderful person. Susan’s thoughtfulness and recognition of how my husband and I want to communicate with each other (when we were at the mercy of the nurses to be that in-between for us), was so invaluable at the time, especially after going through such a huge surgery and some (traumatic to us) rocks and rolls after the lung transplant. Susan made me feel like what I had to say was important to hear and that I was equal to her. She had the empathy to try and understand how difficult it is to go through this while having kids at home. You have an amazing nurse doing an extraordinary job!