Liz was the one who realized the critical care insulin protocol was unsafe soon after Epic go live. The protocol had no lab orders on it and very aggressive bolus doses of IV insulin. Because of this, she felt uncomfortable with the protocol and called the clinical pharmacist, JPA, and nursing leadership to help evaluate the protocol and guide her on how to proceed. After getting all these people in the unit, labs were ordered, and the patient’s potassium came back critically low at 1.9, we were lucky the patient did not have any cardiac adverse events with a potassium that low. I think this patient also had hypoglycemia secondary to the aggressive bolus insulin dosing which would have been much worse if she had not spoken up when she did. She was incredibly helpful that day and stayed late with the clinical pharmacist to figure everything out and get orders done even after she was supposed to leave early that day for a wedding. She’s a great nurse and that was an instance we were all so grateful it was her who caught those order errors, noted the patient safety issues, and escalated quickly.


Additionally, I have heard that she rode with an intubated patient who was transferred to UMMC during a Covid surge because they didn’t have enough paramedic staff for the transfer to occur. Liz really is one of the best nurses I’ve ever met and has regularly questioned orders she was uncomfortable with and helped identify potential safety issues. Liz also actively asks questions when she is unfamiliar with a medication or disease state so she can continually learn herself and always continue to provide high quality patient care.