Recently here at East Campus Adult ICU, we were taking care of a 21-year-old with a very unusual hematological issue not normally seen in the adult population. She appeared to have a mystery illness requiring repeat admissions for multi-organ failure despite diffuse workups. Grasping for additional expert opinion, we reached out to the pediatric hematology team for some advice and guidance as one of our suspect diagnosis was something more frequently seen in the pediatric population.
Walter, one of the Peds Hematology nurse practitioners, responded promptly to our request and took a lot of time to listen to our case presentation, and then spoke with our team over the phone at length sharing his knowledge regarding this condition. He even went above and beyond to chief the case, despite it not being a billable consult, with his attending, who also was able to provide additional thoughts on how we could best serve our patient. Walter not only answered our questions, but provided us with pathways, articles, guidelines, and acted as a sounding board so that we could better take care of our patient with this rare, difficult to diagnose disorder.
Due to Walter's immeasurable compassion and desire to help a patient even outside of his normal assigned workload, in fact, not even admitted to his hospital, we were able to provide exceptional care to this patient, as well as actually educate ourselves as an adult critical care team as to how to better serve others like her in the future. We feel very, very lucky and thankful to have nurse practitioners like Walter as a part of our Loma Linda family. When we are able to depend on each other across health systems, as East Campus Adult ICU was able to with Walter and the Peds Hematology team, it allows us to provide the highest level of excellence to our patients no matter what!