Travel Nurse Goes to Great Lengths to Comfort Patients
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- •June 03, 2019
For this year’s Nurses Week, we received many impressive stories featuring our superhero nurses. Although the celebratory week may be over, we want to continue to share the extraordinary work performed by our FlexCare Family of nurses – starting with this bittersweet story.
In a time of tragedy, this travel nurse took matters into her own hands to console a patient as best she could – because she knew no one else would.
Pamela K. is an exceptional ER RN who has been with FlexCare since 2015 and has completed 17 contracts. With over 6 years of experience in the emergency room, Pamela has encountered many cases but one in particular remains close to her heart.
The veteran traveler shared the following story.
On Day 2 of training on a new assignment. My orienter and I have 6 critical patients in the ED. We get a patient who’s a 1st trimester female with lower abdominal pain. While juggling the other patients, we hear her scream. She had a miscarriage (amniotic sac intact! Shocking for everyone!).
I work to figure out where the baby should be delivered to: pathology or a funeral home, and find out what the patient wants. No one on the unit has those numbers or can help me with this case.
I run back and forth to pathology, consoling the patient, and fending off the Charge RN who wants to put a different patient in the room and put this woman in the hallway. The patient's blood pressure suddenly drops, while we are getting a code next door. I take care of her blood pressure, while contacting the MD, pathology, chaplain services, and social services.
No one there could understand why I was going through such lengths to care for her and her baby post miscarriage.
After some time coordinating with the patient, her partner, pathology, chaplain, charge RN and social work, ensuring the patient had privacy while taking care of other patients, the patient was stable enough to go home. I made sure she had access to follow up care, and local and online resources for women who have had miscarriages.
One of the reasons why this mattered to me is because my research professor in school did a study on how African American women who have miscarriages are commonly underserved by the medical community.
No one there could understand why I was going through such lengths to care for her and her baby post miscarriage.
I wanted to be sure I could do as much as possible to make sure she was supported.
