I wanted to make you aware of an encounter in the Emergency Department (ED) involving one of our nurses, Michele Maize. I was caring for an elderly lady who was sent to the ED from a local Nursing Home complaining of an injured, obviously deformed wrist. The patient had severe dementia and was very agitated. Adding to our challenge of dealing with an agitated demented patient with a fractured wrist was the fact that she only spoke Spanish. Despite giving the patient pain medication and sedatives, the patient remained agitated.

Michele Maize, seeing the difficulty that we were having, came over to the patient’s bedside and starting talking to her in Spanish. She stroked her cheek and spoke to the patient in a very calm and caring way (I could not tell you what she said because I do not speak Spanish). Michele kept the patient calm until we could reduce her fracture and immobilize the patient’s wrist. As you know, in a volatile and busy environment like the Emergency Department, it is difficult to care for your own patients, let alone someone else’s patient.

The fact that Michele took the time to show exceptional kindness to a patient that was not assigned to her shows how much she cares about the patients that we serve every day. I do not want to minimize the caring behavior of the other staff members that were assigned to the patient, I see that every day. What made this special was that a nurse took it upon herself to help a patient that required her unique talents despite the fact that she was not the nurse assigned to the patient.