Hannah is always a team player, but on Sunday she went above and beyond. Our unit was understaffed, and I was assigned three patients. While I was in an isolation room, one of my patients had an episode of emesis and became tachycardic with a sustained heart rate of 150 bpm. He also began to seize and developed respiratory issues.
Hannah called the respiratory therapist and medical team to the bedside and administered Ativan as the doctor directed. After the patient became stable, she cleaned him, changed his linen and chest tube dressing, and wrote a progress note about the series of events.
Later while she was sitting at the nurses' station, she noticed that a patient on the back hallway was bradycardic on the monitor. She notified the primary nurse as she walked towards the patient's room and shortly thereafter the patient went into cardiac arrest. A "code blue" was activated, but thanks to Hannah's swift actions, the patient survived.