On a particular day at the hospital, Katie was caring for a patient who had just had a surgery and was planning to be discharged. The patient had a procedure where he required continuous bladder irrigation and as long as the urine was clear, he would get to go home. Unfortunately, after the irrigation had stopped the patient continued to have serosanguinous urine and per the physicians could not go home that day.
However, throughout the day, the team came in and continued to try to irrigate and flush the foley catheter without any success of clearing the urine. Katie continued to care for the patient and sat and talked with him while the team worked on the catheter. One of the things the patient stated to Katie was that all he wanted was a "good burger." Katie immediately knew what she wanted to do. Katie went down to Wendy's and bought the patient a hamburger (he was on a regular diet).
After giving the patient the food and talking with him a little longer, she came out of the room and stated that he started to tear up that she had brought him the food. He had no family visiting him at the hospital and was not strong enough to get out of bed and go down to Wendy's on his own either. The patient was older and had been in the hospital for a few days at this point. To help the patient feel better, Katie also worked with the charge nurse to move the patient from a room facing the atrium, to a room with a window. At first, the patient said that she did not have to move his room. Katie was insistent and told the patient that she wanted him to have a little bit of a nicer room and to be able to get a little bit of sunlight since he was not very mobile at this time. The patient ended up staying a couple more days after that and was thankful that he did get moved to the sunny side room.
Bringing the patient something as simple as a hamburger really meant a lot to the patient. Moving him to a sunny side room helped improve his mood as well. Katie goes above and beyond for her patients every day. In this particular situation, Katie used empathy and caring practices to help this patient feel like he was her top priority and could be seen by his gratitude towards her.