A patient was admitted to Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center from another facility where she had developed several severe post-operative complications from a small bowel obstruction surgery. This patient had a heart attack, stroke, altered mental status change, was immobile, and now trached. She had a dehisced abdominal incision along with significant unstageable wounds on their neck, heels, throat, and coccyx that were all present on arrival at our hospital. A wound care consult was entered and the patient was immediately seen by Lisa Ganeko. Lisa took pictures of all the wounds and partnered with the attending physician, surgeon, intensivists, and infectious disease providers to develop an immediate and aggressive plan of care. During each visit with the patient, Lisa would spend 2+ hours cleaning, evaluating, measuring, and partnering back with all the providers to determine a continued plan of care. After this, all wounds would be redressed, and wound vacs applied. During this time, partnerships were created with critical care nursing leadership and the ICU nurses to ensure the patient had continued care in these areas until Lisa would see the patient 2-3 days later. Lisa provided education on the dressing changes and wound vac maintenance to the ICU nurses as well so they would know how to take care of the patient and troubleshoot, if necessary while being available to assist if needed.

Fast forward to 300+ days later, and this patient’s wounds are almost nonexistent due to Lisa Ganeko’s professional commitment to patient care, wound care expertise, collaboration with the physicians to recommend next steps, and continued communication with the critical care nursing leadership and ICU staff. Lisa has also partnered with family who is always at the patient’s bedside. Lisa has spent over 300 hours caring for the patient and reversing what we could control to improve the patient’s quality of life.