(412) 364-8200 | Monday - Friday, 8am to 5pm ET
It was 5:50 am when the beeper went off. Knowing that I was not on call, I was in no hurry to get to work that morning. At 6:15 am I got the panicked phone call from the cath lab manager – “Are you on your way?” I explained that I was not on call, but I could come in. “It’s Cindy! The STEMI patient is Cindy!” she said. These words sent chills up my spine as I envisioned my beloved co-worker as the one needing our care. When I arrived in the cath lab twenty minutes later, I learned the full story.
The STEMI alert that was called at 5:50 am was for a 90-year-old woman in the ED. My friend Cindy was one of the nurses on-call that morning. As she rushed into work along with the rest of the cath lab staff, it seemed that it would be just like any other STEMI. That is, until Cindy walked into the control room. As she stepped into the room she reached out to her co-workers and abruptly fell to the floor in cardiac arrest. Thankfully the other nurse and cardiologist were there and quickly jumped into action. They defibrillated my dear friend, and within minutes had her on the cath lab table ready for intervention. The teamwork that was witnessed that day was beyond what words can describe, and I am so glad to say that Cindy survived and continued to work in the cath lab. As for the 90-year-old woman in the Emergency Room, thankfully she was a false STEMI and did well too.
As anyone in healthcare will tell you, taking care of your work family can be one of the most difficult things you may experience in your professional life, but it can also be the most rewarding. The truly amazing thing about this story is that it happened in a small community hospital that did not always have the capability to perform cardiac catheterizations, let alone coronary interventions.
Thankfully, years before Cindy’s cardiac arrest, research showed that it was safe to perform Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) in hospitals without on-site open-heart surgery. Due to the results of that research, PCI programs across the country have been able to save countless lives despite the fact they did not have back-up bypass surgery on-site. I truly believe if our hospital did not have the capability to perform PCI, Cindy’s outcome would have been drastically different.
If your facility is interested in the implementation of a PCI program with, or without, on-site open-heart surgery, Corazon is here to help. We would be glad to guide your organization through the implementation process that will lead to the rewarding accomplishment of saving lives like you never have before.
company 
