Role Model Compassionate Care:
To watch LorryAnn Care for her patients is all one needs to see to understand how she cares at a higher level. Being a neuro ICU nurse requires a higher level of understanding and intuition when caring for patients. The patient population has much more time-intensive interventions than any other unit and most occur hourly. The repetitive nature of these patients can be taxing and demanding for any nurse. LorryAnn never loses her patience and is always supportive of her patients. She is the nurse whom others aspire to be like, including me. I don't know how she stays so positive even when patients don't have such a good outlook. She goes above and beyond to educate and support the patients and families. She always tells her patients what she is doing even when they don't appear to have any mental status. She does this because it is the right thing to do. Every time I work beside her my heart is enlightened when families leave for the night knowing their loved ones are cared for and are so comfortable with LorryAnn.
Special Connection:
Over the winter a patient stopped taking his Coumadin as his insurance didn't provide enough coverage to afford it. While showering he passed out and was brought to the hospital. He was very young and active and had a family who cared so much about him. In fact, his family was distraught seeing him intubated in the ICU. They tried to wean his sedation many times to check a neuro status but he would just go crazy on the ventilator abruptly halting the exam. On this particular night, I was working next to LorryAnn, she expressed her concerns to me about doing a neuro exam and asked for reassurance. She told me how important this exam was and how she felt she could change his plan of care if she could just get this neuro exam. I suggested that she talk to him as he was waking up to assure him he was fine. I stayed with LorryAnn while she did the exam just in case she needed an extra set of hands. She turned off his drips and with her soft reassuring voice told him how she needed him to be calm and held his hand. She kept talking to him and explained that if he could be calm she would work to get his breathing tube out. We were ready for the worst, but I could see the patient trusted her, he believed in her and he focused on her. She said, "squeeze my hands," he complied. she said, "raise your arms," he did. She said, "do you know what happened?" He started crying and shook his head from side to side. I could only imagine what was going through his head when he woke up with a breathing tube in his throat and in the hospital. She explained everything to him and told him it was all "going to be okay," because he was getting better.
Significant Difference:
Because LorryAnn took the time to do what was right, not what was easy, we were able to not only to wean the sedation off of this patient but to remove his breathing tube by the morning. Having left the hospital distraught the night before, the family came in that morning to find him extubated, sitting up in bed and ordering breakfast. The family was crying tears of joy because just 24 hours earlier it seemed unknown what his recovery would be. LorryAnn made a significant difference in this patient's life because she took the chance of a sedation vacation in the middle of the night when everyone else said no, she said, "let's try." She is the true definition of a DAISY Nurse.
I was recently out shopping and saw this patient. I asked him how he was and how things were going. He commented on how he would never forget LorryAnn and the care she provided for him.