I Will Never Forget Case Study

The scenario that I am choosing to write about is one that I will never forget. It was around Christmas time and I was working the night shift in a local Emergency Room, which was a level 3 Trauma Center. Over the radio, we heard dispatch sending an ambulance to a home of a child not breathing. That particular night was slow. We did not have many patients in rooms. Several other nurses and I all gathered around the dispatch radio to listen for what EMS was going to say once they got on-scene. My heart was pounding and my anxiety had already started setting in. I was praying that this was a false alarm. Shortly after EMS announced their arrival on-scene, we hear them say, “nobody is here”. The Emergency room phone immediately rang and it was
At that time, myself and three other nurses went outside and stood in the ambulance bay, anxiously awaiting to see if the family would come to our hospital. Other staff members were getting the pediatric trauma room set up, just in-case. We stood outside around five minutes, and that is when it happened. A truck came speeding through the parking lot, almost hitting the large brick pole that led into the entrance of the ambulance bay. I could see the mother holding the child in her arms. The family, which was a young mother and father, were both panicking, crying, and screaming. I can still vividly remember the looks on their face; looks of hopelessness, helplessness, disparity. And there was the child. A 14 month old beautiful brown haired little girl; her lips were blue, her skin was pale yet warm. I immediately opened the truck door and grabbed the beautiful little girl, running into the Emergency Room entrance doors with her lifeless body in my arms. I had already started chest compressions on her while running to the pediatric trauma
I refused to give up. And then it happened, we started seeing a rhythm showing up on the monitor. I stopped chest compressions and the rhythm continued. At this time, we contacted the pediatrician on call for further advice on what particular drug therapy for maintenance would be appropriate and we were also contacting our Air transport for transportation to the Children’s Hospital. The parents were at the bedside at this point and we were explaining to them everything that had occurred during the time frame. We also were obtaining further information from them of the events leading up to the time that the child stopped breathing. We learned that the child had been sick and coughing and that the mother had ran to the store to get some medicine for the child. The child and the father had fallen asleep together, and when the mother returned she found the child not breathing. The air transport team finally arrived and we sent the child to the Children’s Hospital; where she stayed for approximately one week. During that week, myself and several other staff members drove to visit the family and give them small snack bags and other items that we knew they would need during their