January 2013
Linda
Blakesley
,
RN
med/surg
Newark Wayne Community Hospital
Newark
,
NY
United States

 

 

 

Linda is consistantly coming in on her days off to offer her skin care expertise to assist newer team members and place VAC dressings on patients' wounds. Recently, she started going to DeMay Living Center to do the same. Linda is a great team player and a huge patient advocate. She would rather come in on her day off to look at a VAC dressing, than let the patient wait until the next day.

Recently Linda, once again went above and beyond to care for one of our patients at NWCH. Linda was in a leadership role that day and did not have a patient assignment to provide direct care. She did, however, get asked to assess another nurse's patient that was becoming sicker. Linda assessed the patient and then called the Early Nursing Intervention Team from the ICU to assess the patient and hopefully bring the patient to the ICU.

The ICU was really acute that day and Linda was told that there was no room for another patient. Linda asked if there were no beds or if there were not enough nurses. The ICU nurse told Linda that the nurses were tied up with an admission and had full assignments. Linda then asked if her patient could have a room in the ICU if she provided a nurse to care for the patient until the ICU nurses were able.

Linda, having no direct care assignment that day, rallied up her 2 west team to cover her leadership role while she was off the floor. She then took the patient to the ICU, settled the patient (hooked up cardiac and continuous vital sign monitoring), and cared for the patient for a couple of hours while the ICU settled.

Within that couple of hours, the patient brought to the ICU quickly declined. In the end, the patient did well because the continuous monitoring and 1:1 care Linda provided allowed the team to work quickly.