Megan has always been an outstanding nurse for as long as I’ve known her over the past three years at Rush Medical Center. This past Wednesday night, our Urology service was called to a patient’s bedside in the setting of a difficult catheter placement. What our service thought was going to be a straightforward catheter placement turned into a much more difficult catheter placement.

When we arrived at the patient’s bedside at around 6:30 PM, Megan was already in the room, comforting the patient, an elderly, disoriented gentleman. When we realized the catheter was not going to be easily placed and needed to obtain a bedside cystoscope from central supply, Megan waited with the patient and helped maintain our sterile field. For the next 2.5 hours, as we attempted to place a catheter into the patient’s bladder via flexible cystourethroscopy, Megan comforted the patient, assisted us residents with our bedside procedure, which made what was a very stressful procedure much more manageable for both the staff and the patient. Not only did Megan care about the patient, but she also cared about the well-being of us residents, providing both encouragement, assistance, and a calming presence that allowed us to successfully complete our procedure. We could not have done this without Megan.

By the time we had finished, and Megan had left to go home, we realized it was approximately 9:00, 2 hours after her shift had ended at 7 pm. Megan went above and beyond, past her shift end, and much beyond her work hours, to assist in providing excellent patient care. She did all this with a smile and positive attitude that had an effect on everyone in the room. We could not have helped this patient without Megan’s assistance. She is among the best nurses at Rush, and her excellence, compassion, positivity, skill, and attitude are recognized by both patients and staff.