My wife came in to have some endometriosis stuff looked at and possibly lasered off. She ended up having to have one of her ovaries removed. The surgery was a success, but her post-surgical pain was off the charts.  My wife also has an issue where all medication, including pain meds, does not work very well on her at all. So you can only imagine the issues with her and her anxiety about not being given enough pain meds.  I am a critical care paramedic, and I have a very keen sense of what’s going on and how the staff treats her as a patient and a human being. 

When I was brought back into the recovery room after an extended time due to them trying to get her pain management under control, my wife was raving about her nurse, Emma, and how amazing she’s been! To hear my wife talk about her and how good she’s been to her, her competence as a nurse, and just her bedside manner and overall care was nothing short of a breath of fresh air! 

She’s been through a couple of surgeries, and the pain from this one has been the worst she’s ever endured, but the care from Emma made it comforting and severely eased her anxiety levels. This alone affected her ability to manage her pain, and we are very thankful.  

I don’t know the charge nurse‘s name, but I also want to mention that she let Emma do what she needed to do, even though she’s only been in this unit for six months.  Emma has 30 years of nursing experience in other units at other hospitals, and she said she came to EMC to do something new and learn more! That admiration and hunger for learning with that kind of experience allows her to be an incredible nurse with tons of compassion. I am so impressed with her level of bedside manner, because after being in the medical field for 20-plus years myself, I know it’s hard not to get burned out.