Brittney Zahn
December 2021
Brittney
Zahn
,
RN
Children's Surgical Unit- 3NW
Primary Children's Hospital
Salt Lake City
,
UT
United States

 

 

 

Brittney was very attentive to numerous needs like that which aided greatly in B's recovery and may well have saved B's life.
Our daughter, B, became very ill at the end of October. She started throwing up and we couldn't figure out why. She wasn't getting better, we had just moved to the Preston, Idaho area and were still getting settled in. After several days of being sick, B was getting very dehydrated, and we took her to the hospital. After two different facilities, tests, an x-ray, and a CT scan it was discovered that B had swallowed a small button battery and a small magnabead magnet which got lodged in her intestines. They life flighted us to Primary Children's here in SLC where over a few weeks period they performed 1 surgery where they successfully extracted the objects and then another a week later to make one more perforation repair. In total B has been here almost 5 weeks recovering from infections and fevers since then.

When I pondered on which nurses stood out the most in terms of time, care, and effort there were 2 clear choices. Brittney Zahn and Lisa Manning were with us as night nurses and between the two of them, they cared for us for about 2 weeks! Brittany was extremely knowledgeable and proficient in her ability to analyze what B needed especially early on. At one point B was having issues with recovering and was having fevers and heart rate issues. Brittney went the extra mile in reviewing several days' data and realized that B had been tachycardic; an increased heart rate and needed help with getting a blood transfusion to aid her recovery. She was very attentive to numerous needs like that which aided greatly in B's recovery and may well have saved B's life. Brittney is also a natural teacher and often had a student nurse on top of every other duty she had, which was amazing to see as I'm sure the other nurses will aid in saving even more lives. We are very grateful for Brittney's care and dedication to B with all the experience and effort she shared with us on our behalf.