Whatever You Need Me To Do
Date: May 24, 2010

The call came in the middle of the night.

A baby, just 21 days old, was in the Redmond Regional Medical Center emergency room and needed immediate advanced pediatric care services. He was transferred to Floyd. When little Taylor arrived in the Pediatric Intermediate Care Unit he had a fever, wasn’t eating and was having difficulty breathing.

Nurses started IVs to give the baby nourishment and a blood transfusion, but he was declining quickly.

 “This was an extremely sick child,” said Cindy Lewis, clinical manager for Pediatrics at Floyd.

Then, Taylor’s breathing stopped. Nurses started CPR while a team of Floyd professionals from across the hospital responded.

 “People came from everywhere,” Cindy said.

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit nurses came. The Pediatric Intermediate Care nurse was on hand. Pediatric nurses were joined by respiratory therapists and phlebotomists. Dr. Karen Timberlake, the on-call pediatrician, directed the real-life drama.

“It was a joint effort, a very successful effort that went smoothly,” Cindy said.

Taylor was stabilized and prepared to be transported to an Atlanta children’s hospital where he could get more specialized care, but weather proved an obstacle, and the transport team was delayed.

“Our staff had to manage this baby for about four hours on the ventilator until the transport team could come,” Cindy said. “A lot of times we may manage a baby for maybe an hour, but this was four or five hours of intensive management in a critical situation.
It proves how much we need the Pediatric Intermediate Care rooms. They are set up for ventilator. If that child had come in on the regular pediatric floor it would not have gone as smoothly.”

 “The great thing about it,” Dr. Timberlake said, “was every single one of those people had a ‘yes’ attitude. They did everything that I threw at them, took care of every order and never once seemed put out or negative about all of the extra work that was required. It was a pleasure to have these people helping me last night. ‘I can do whatever you need me to do,’ was what I was told repeatedly as I hollered out additional orders and questions. I truly believe that, together, we saved a life last night, and it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

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