Todd Kennaway
May 2020
Todd
Kennaway
,
BSN, RN
PVH Emergency Department
Poudre Valley Hospital
Fort Collins
,
CO
United States

 

 

 

Recently, our volume in the ED has been sporadic. The pandemic has caused many patients to reconsider whether or not they really want to come in. As a result, our staff has had to be very flexible and to deal with frequent changes to policy and to work schedules. On an unusually busy day in the ED, a patient in his forties was brought to the ED via EMS with urinary retention. We scanned his bladder and found that he was retaining more than a liter of urine. A foley catheter was placed and much of the urine was drained. The patient was discharged home and proceeded (of his own accord) to drink "as much water as he could to flush his system". He returned to the ED a few hours later. In the time that had elapsed since his first visit, the ED had another patient who was particularly rude and verbally abusive to our staff (including the nurse who I am nominating here). This unruly patient had affected all of us and we were all feeling pretty exhausted and ready to end the shift. So when our patient with the urinary retention returned, we were sorry to see that we had not resolved his issue. Todd Kennaway, after having patiently endured the rude patient and transporting him up to the floor, was floating in the area where our urinary retention patient was. The patient complained that he was experiencing leakage around the foley. Since we were still pretty busy, the provider suggested that the leakage was simply due to poor positioning and marked the patient ready for discharge. When Todd heard about the situation, he went into the patient's room to see if he could help. Todd proceeded to work with the patient to better understand the problem. He realized that there was a blockage in the tubing and flushed the foley until he was able to drain another liter of urine. This struck me as a great example of nursing excellence. Todd had a rough day and in spite of a lot of stress and general uncertainty, he still managed to put patient needs first. He could have let this guy "slip through the cracks", but instead, he took the time to figure out the root cause of a problem and address it. It was not a glamorous or particularly earth-shaking situation, but for this one patient, it probably meant the difference between resolution and a seriously bad outcome."