Andrea Stephenson, RN, emergency room manager at Fillmore Community Hospital, received a phone call in the middle of the night—and her concerns afterward helped save a patient’s life. The caller was the local 911 dispatcher, letting Andrea know that a man with probable COVID-19 was driving himself to the hospital from his hotel about half a mile away.
When the patient didn’t show up after 25 minutes, Andrea felt concerned and called dispatch back, letting them know he’d never arrived.
“I was worried that something had happened to him, or that he’d gotten lost,” she says. “I asked EMS to send someone to the hotel to check on him.”
Andrea says she’s seen a lot of patients with COVID-19 get confused when they’re depleted from oxygen, so it wasn’t out of the question that the patient could’ve gotten lost.
“All the possibilities went through my mind,” she says.
It turned out it was a good thing she’d called back. The patient—who was in his mid-30s, alone, and hundreds of miles from his home outside the U.S.—thought he could easily drive himself to the hospital, but he’d become too sick and had stayed in his hotel room.
“I think we realized it at the same time—him at the hotel and me at the hospital—that he couldn’t get himself out,” Andrea says.
When the patient arrived at the hospital via ambulance, he was incredibly ill. “He had Type 1 diabetes and the COVID-19 was causing serious complications with his diabetes that needed attention immediately,” she says. “He was in DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis) and nearing multi-system failure. If he’d stayed in the hotel, he didn’t have a lot of time left.”
The patient needed to be transferred to an ICU, which isn’t available at Fillmore, so the team called Utah Valley Hospital only to learn they had just one ICU bed available, and they were keeping that bed for a patient who needed intubation. He would have to stay in Fillmore.
“We don’t normally treat ICU patients,” says Andrea, who along with Erin Ervine, RN, were the only nurses working in the entire hospital that night. “Fortunately, we have Wayne Brown, MD, who is an amazing doctor we trust. He’s the type of doctor that when he says, ‘OK, we’re going to keep this patient and we can do it,’ you believe him. You have the confidence that you can do it.”
Andrea says while they’ve cared for patients with DKA before, the complexity with COVID-19 was an additional challenge. “All his symptoms were diabetes related, but it was still very complex,” she says. “Dr. Brown basically said to us, ‘We have to work fast.’”
The ED team who helped stabilized him included Erin, Andrea, Jase Stringam, lab manager, and Connie Lancaster, patient care tech. Several other patients were needing care at the time as well, including an inpatient who also needed to be in an ICU.
“We couldn’t transfer that patient either because of lack of beds, so essentially we had two ICU patients on the floor,” she says. “While we’re not used to this, we figure it out when we have to. We’re definitely more comfortable when we can send patients to those who specialize in the ICU.”
Jase stayed in the lab doing blood work the entire time to help.
“Jace was incredible,” Andrea says. “This was over a weekend and usually our lab team is on call on weekends. They’ll come run tests and then head back home to sleep. Jace stayed here the entire two days.”
Once the patient was stable, he was transferred to med/surg for a few more days before being discharged and flying home to his family.
“He was an incredibly kind person,” says Andrea. “He was grateful we’d taken care of him and that we’d gotten him in here.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Andrea saved this person’s life,” Dr. Brown says. “When she first got that call from dispatch, she ran toward the problem and sent EMS to find him. I can’t say enough good about these nurses and caregivers. This morning a young man is looking pretty good that would likely not be here at all without Andrea’s persistence and the dedication of this group.”