One night we had a young girl brought in to the ER by her grandmother. This patient was having an anxiety attack and was actively hyperventilating. No matter what we did in the ER we couldn't seem to calm the patient down. During a 3 hours stay in the ER, patient hyperventilating the entire time, we had given her Morphine, Ativan, and Valium. Enough medicine that could put an adult to sleep. Unfortunately NOTHING worked for this 14 year old girl.

She continued to hyperventilate in spite of our clinical efforts until finally Richard Rabbath came up with the brilliant idea to give the patient a teddy bear! Every month a bag of teddy bears are donated to the ER and we give them out to our pediatric population once they have undergone a needle stick for an IV, etc. Richard walked into the room with the teddy bear and handed it to her stating, "Here is a teddy bear for you. Maybe it can help you feel better!" At that moment, the patient stopped hyperventilating completely, after 3 hours!

After that we continued to watch her in the ER and she rested well until she was finally discharged. Word spread quickly around the ER about Richard's "teddy bear method". It just goes to show that nursing care isn't always about what medicine we can give to heal, but instead what compassionate gesture we can offer to help heal our patients. Way to go Richard!