Dana Hamons' display of our values, Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect, and Excellence (ICARE) the night we took care of a 38-year-old male who came in with chest pain, coded and passed away. The patient was briskly diagnosed in the ER with a STEMI and shortly transferred to the Cath Lab. Shortly after being in the Cath Lab the patient lost his pulse. A code was paged overhead at which time Dr. S, myself and a paramedic from ER quickly ran to the code as we had just transferred him out of the ER to get stents placed. Upon entering the Cath Lab room, everyone was swiftly doing their assigned job. Every person in that room did such a phenomenal job from OA, Charge Nurses, Cath Lab staff, RT and to all the staff that Ms. H NP had lined up to perform compressions.
Everyone was amazing, however, Dana's leadership and support of every staff member in the room just can't go unnoticed and was every bit beyond exceptional. Anything and everything that each staff member asked for, Dana responded emergently, smoothly with calmness and without delay. She coordinated all the drips the Cardiologist and critical care NP requested and obtained them from Pharmacy, kept family informed, provided additional drugs to the medication nurse when out of multiple crash carts from other rooms, performed compressions when everyone else was exhausted and assisted with whatever else was needed or requested by every person in the room.
After coding our patient over two hours, Dana provided gentle and loving compassion at all times and especially the family, wife, mother, and brother, when pronounced and gave them the opportunity to say their goodbyes. During this time, she managed every single person in the room upon explaining that each of us had done everything possible to save him. After the code was called, Dana asked the patient's wife if we could pray with her and led a magnificent and heart aching prayer to which everyone in the room, including the Cath Lab Cardiologist, broke out in tears. The pain and suffering we all felt could not be denied. This was such an emotional code as this was the wife's second husband in four years that had died of a massive heart attack.
He left an amazing family behind including three young children. This display of professionalism, wisdom, compassion, and camaraderie our night shift staff exhibited is for this reason that I so honored and proud to be working at HMTW. Even a few hours later after the code was over, Dana went around to everyone in that room and thanked them personally for their help and told us what an exceptional job we had done.