I was the charge nurse in the EC recently and Maria was working as a CAN (Critical Care Nurse). It was a very busy day in the ER with long wait times for patients to be seen by an emergency room provider. The triage nurses were busy triaging patients and had initiated NTSOs (nursing treatment standing orders) on everyone and many labs were being drawn on people waiting in the lobby. It was brought to my attention, as the charge nurse, that there were 3 patients that had left without being seen who needed to be called and encouraged to come back based on the results of their initial labs. Maria offered to call one of them to help me out. Maria was able to get ahold of this patient and talked to him over the phone. She highly encouraged him to come back to the ER because we wanted him to have a full medical screening exam by the doctors because his troponin blood test came back elevated above the normal range and we were concerned about this along with his presenting symptoms. He didn't really want to come back and wait but with some convincing from Maria, he decided he would come back to the ER for further evaluation. Maria let me know that she had talked to him and had encouraged him to return to the ER hopefully sooner than later. He did return to the ER before the end of our shift. Maria let me know that he had come back. When Maria and I came back to work the next day, the patient was boarding in the emergency room waiting for an inpatient bed to open up. He was telling everyone who came by his room, "Maria saved my life!"

Our leadership team received a note from Patient Relations that a patient had called and wanted to thank Maria. During his hospitalization, this patient was found to have bilateral PEs (pulmonary emboli) and LLE DVT(left lower extremity deep vein thrombosis). I want to take a moment to say thank you to Maria. She truly made an impact by offering to help the charge nurse make one phone call. She is a team player and always will jump in and help. I am nominating her from both a charge nurse perspective and on behalf of the patient who credits the nurse for convincing him to come back which he believes in turn saved his life.