Betty Mahanna is truly one of a kind nurse. She touches the hearts of everyone she comes in contact with. She gives 1,110% of herself to every patient, no matter their socioeconomic background, religious preference, race or color - it just doesn't matter. Betty is outstanding and many of us already know that.
Several weeks ago, we had a patient who lost their baby and they wanted to participate in organ donation. KODA was contacted and Betty was there to help to arrange all of this. It was a very touching and emotional day. I was in charge and was able to witness all of this.
Betty showed me this letter that she received from KODA this week. She doesn't know that I made a copy of it and I wanted to share it with you so that you all would know just how special Betty really is. This was just a shining example of some of the things that Betty does. Betty is the epitome of our mission statement at Hardin Memorial. I have been blessed to work with her for 16 years and she makes me want to be a better nurse.
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Dear Nurse Betty,
We worked with you on a case at Hardin Memorial on a zero-day old baby boy last week who was able to be a tissue donor. We wanted to reach out to you to tell you how much we appreciated your kindness, compassion, and professionalism during such a difficult case. We apologize for not reaching out sooner, but we have had to really collect our thoughts so that we could put this letter together.
I have worked for KODA for four years this month, have been to many hospitals across the state of KY/IN/WV, worked with countless nurses, and have worked on numerous pediatric cases and have never encountered such an amazing nurse such as yourself.
I am more than sure you remember the case that I am referencing. I have never reached out to a nurse that I interacted with before today, but I could not sit back and let you go unrecognized. You see, here at KODA we pride ourselves on being Compassionate, Dedicated, and Accountable team members. We exist simply to honor the gift of donation every day. While you do not work at KODA, your interaction with our team as well as with the family was above and beyond what we stand for. For that, we wanted to say thank you! Thank you for being such an advocate for donation for this beautiful grieving family.
I am not sure if you remember all of the details leading up to our arrival at the hospital but solely because of you, we were able to salvage this case. When we called to get an OR/procedure room we were told nothing was available until after OR hours. This family did not want their baby sent to the morgue, so we were very restricted in our recovery time frames. If we would have had to wait for an OR/procedure room to be available, we would not have been able to recover, and this family desperately wanted to donate. They wanted something good to come from such a horrific situation. Thanks to you, when our donor center called you to notify you of our situation, you immediately offered for us to do the recovery in one of the L & D C-section rooms. I was the Administrator On-Call that day and did not even think of that being an option and was prepared to shut down the case.
After our arrival at the hospital and talking about our process to you and talking to the family, you organized an Honor Walk for this beautiful baby boy with all of the L & D staff. This touched our hearts so much because our donors (tissue donors) do not get Honor Walks. They are generally sent to the morgue and transported to our facility in Louisville where we honor them by stating a moment of silence but that is it. You took it upon yourself to honor this baby and his family in such a beautiful way; it was simply amazing.