Alicia Valencia
December 2021
Alicia
Valencia
,
RN
5 West Intensive Care Unit
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Torrance
,
CA
United States
Alicia saw the situation and volunteered to be assigned to his care whenever possible.
I wanted to mention something that I witnessed in 5W ICU that I wanted to share with you. Our 5 W ICU nurses impress me on a daily basis, but this stood out as something beyond their usual high level of care and caring. I was really impressed with something that Alicia Valencia did for one of our patients that I wanted to highlight. It demonstrates her dedication to her patients and how much she cares for them as a nurse and fellow human being.
I was attending in 5 W ICU and we had a relatively young man admitted with COVID pneumonia. He was in 5 W ICU on a high flow nasal cannula and was getting worse. He had been struggling with hypoxic respiratory failure for several weeks and, in addition to the physical aspects of the disease, he was also depressed. He wanted to leave Against Medical Advice (AMA) to go home to die. While we couldn't predict if he would get through his disease or not, he was relatively young (~middle aged) and without other significant medical issues, so we were trying to encourage him to keep his spirits up.
Since he was Spanish-speaking, we had our Spanish-speaking house staff talk to him and try and help him understand his situation. We had his wife and daughter talk with him. We even used Precedex to try and help his anxiety. None of this was really effective and we struggled every day with him being so depressed that he didn't want to do little things that could help himself (e.g. self-proning) and kept wanting to leave AMA to die at home. What worked the best?
Alicia saw the situation and volunteered to be assigned to his care whenever possible. The daily encouragement from Alicia seemed to be the only thing that had an impact on his spirits as he struggled with his situation. In the end, the patient continued to worsen, and he eventually passed away. However, over the week or so that he was in 5 W ICU, I watched as Alicia demonstrated the true healing power our nurses can have on the psychological well-being of our patients. Alicia showed that she "cares for the whole person" - and by his response, I think our patient noticed this as well.
I was attending in 5 W ICU and we had a relatively young man admitted with COVID pneumonia. He was in 5 W ICU on a high flow nasal cannula and was getting worse. He had been struggling with hypoxic respiratory failure for several weeks and, in addition to the physical aspects of the disease, he was also depressed. He wanted to leave Against Medical Advice (AMA) to go home to die. While we couldn't predict if he would get through his disease or not, he was relatively young (~middle aged) and without other significant medical issues, so we were trying to encourage him to keep his spirits up.
Since he was Spanish-speaking, we had our Spanish-speaking house staff talk to him and try and help him understand his situation. We had his wife and daughter talk with him. We even used Precedex to try and help his anxiety. None of this was really effective and we struggled every day with him being so depressed that he didn't want to do little things that could help himself (e.g. self-proning) and kept wanting to leave AMA to die at home. What worked the best?
Alicia saw the situation and volunteered to be assigned to his care whenever possible. The daily encouragement from Alicia seemed to be the only thing that had an impact on his spirits as he struggled with his situation. In the end, the patient continued to worsen, and he eventually passed away. However, over the week or so that he was in 5 W ICU, I watched as Alicia demonstrated the true healing power our nurses can have on the psychological well-being of our patients. Alicia showed that she "cares for the whole person" - and by his response, I think our patient noticed this as well.