Lorena was one of two nurses working in the 8W East module. Her co-worker had gone to lunch, and the break-relief nurse was covering. She heard the cardiac alarm going off and went into her co-worker’s patient room, where she found the break-relief nurse assessing the patient. She worked with the break-relief nurse to complete a set of vital signs and assess and examine the patient. They paged the physician.

She remained in the patient’s room while the break-relief nurse responded to other patients’ calls for medication. She paged the surgical team a second time and continued to monitor the patient closely. By this time, the patient was tachypneic, breathing at 30 breaths per minute, with an elevated heart rate and labile blood pressure. She called the Clinical Surveillance Nurse to assess the patient and paged the physician a third time, noting that she would page the attending physician if no one responded.

The physician called back after the third page and provided orders. Minutes later, Lorena called a rapid response since the vital signs and respiratory status continued to be unstable and were not responding to interventions. The response team arrived quickly and transferred the patient to the ICU.

This nurse is a role model for teamwork on 8W. Her offers to help are always unsolicited, and when she sees a co-worker with an unstable patient, she immediately steps in. I am very proud of her accomplishments in the past year. She is our UPC co-chair and has served as a relief charge nurse for less than a year. Just three years ago, she started as a new graduate from our UCLA MECN program. She is the RRH Nurse Peer Review Committee chair for FY25 and co-chair of the UID (Unity in Diversity) Council. She also recently helped staff the hospital’s “Unity and Kindness Day” as a member of the council’s Community Participation and Contribution subgroup.