An ICU story....

Andy brought home this certificate yesterday for "Outstanding Patient Communications" and he told me not to put it on the blog but I just had to, I am so proud of him and the doctor that he is becoming.

Andy is currently working in the ICU and surprisingly he enjoys it and as he says, he is killing off a lot of people. He tells me all of the time that there are so many people there that should be dead and often the families are not ready to let go. The story: a lady was admitted from the nursing home and she arrived at the hospital intubated and her chart had the words FULL CODE in big bold letters which mean that you do everything to save their life. A few hours later the woman's daughter called the hospital and asked to speak to the doctor taking care of her mother and she got Andy. Andy said that she was just furious and yelling and about 15 seconds later he told that she needed to just stop and listen closely to what he was going to tell her. So Andy proceeded to tell her that she arrived with FULL CODE on the chart. The daughter was upset because the mother was supposed to be a DNR, but here she is in the ICU on life support. After talking with the daughter, Andy and her came up with a plan that the mother would remain intubated until the daughter was able to get there and then they would remove the tube and wait for her to die.

The next day when Andy got to the hospital the mother (the patient) was awake and alert. As the day went on she became even more alert and Andy felt confident that if he took the tube out that she would live. So Andy called the daughter and told her how things had changed and she agreed to let Andy take the tube out.

The mother has now fully recovered and she is back in the nursing home -alive!

The daughter contacted Dr. Anonymous, the medical staff director, aka the doctor of all doctors, and told him about Andy and how well he treated them, etc. I think that means so much. I mean how many times do you say that you were happy with your medical care or customer service but never let anyone know that they were doing a good job. Because of this I am making a pact with myself that the next time I have good service or medical care I will let the person in charge know.

I am just so proud of Andy. He is doing such a good job with his residency. I do not know how he does all that he does and now to top it all off he has to study for Step 3 of the medical boards that he is taking next month.

To Andy: I am sorry for posting this, but I love you "and want to announce publicly" how much you mean to me. Keep doing what you are doing hon, you are amazing.