Lindsey Smith, BSN, RN, SCRN, Stroke Coordinator, was part of the hospital’s “Proning Team,” repositioning COVID-19 patients to help them heal and get more oxygen into their lungs. She discusses her reaction to seeing one of her patients recover.
Members of the Community Medical Center team in Toms River have been tirelessly caring for patients, and one another, as they respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Throughout it all, they have responded with strength, skill, and compassion, and shown who they truly are – heroes.
Transcription
My typical role is stroke coordinator, but I have been assigned as part of the proning team. So, the proning team is a new group of people that we’ve put together in our ICU’s to help our ventilated patients that are COVID. And proning is turning the patient onto their stomach and it actually helps the lungs, and helps reduces the pressure in their lungs so we can help them recover from their COVID, and we’ve been seeing really great successes with it.
We had one of our patients, he was in his 30's, he was part of our proning, so we did prone and supine him for a full week, and the following week when he came back, he just had an oxygen nasal cannula in his nose, and he was talking, and I was able to go into his room and help educate him on the importance of turning and repositioning himself every two hours to keep his lungs healthy and expanding, and it was so great to tell him where he was and where he is now, and his improvement over the week, and he was so surprised, and he was so shocked and thankful. It was a really special moment to be able to speak to him.