Danielle Vanthomme
March 2025
Danielle
Vanthomme
,
RN
Emergency
Henry Ford St. John Hospital
Detroit
,
MI
United States

 

 

 

Her deep humility and professional composure often mean she flies under the radar of management and physicians, only leaving a wake of completed tasks and contented patients.
In spite of her young age, Danielle is considered one of our veteran nurses who, when not training orientees, spends the majority of her time in our eight-bed resuscitation bay in the ED, where we receive our sickest, undifferentiated patients. In short, Danielle is our problem solver and our rock. Her combination of resourcefulness, work ethic, and commitment to nursing and teaching is genuinely irreplaceable. Technical excellence does not accurately describe her level of procedural skill when it comes to obtaining IV access, either by traditional methods or ultrasound guidance. To her, there is no such thing as a difficult foley or NG tube placement. Obstacles to the patient's workup cease to exist in her presence. Her knowledge of critical care medicine and attention to detail are excellent, silently unkinking the norepinephrine line as we all scratch our heads on this persistently hypotensive septic patient who was not responding to vasopressors, or offering gentle redirection to resident and attending alike when an intervention might inadvertently harm a patient. In the moments when the resuscitation bay is quiet, Danielle can be found in the modules, keeping her compatriots afloat amidst the unceasing flow of ambulances. Her efficiency and mastery of her work allow her to be in more places at once than might be expected of her. Some nurses might be tempted to sit back and gather themselves, but Danielle is truly implacable, her work rate feverish month by month, year after year. Her deep humility and professional composure often mean she flies under the radar of management and physicians, only leaving a wake of completed tasks and contented patients. Where chaos makes its bed in the ED, she leaves organization and order, with the department only realizing the magnitude of her contributions when we are deprived of her on her well-deserved off days.