Article written by my patient's mother...heart warming

[RNsydneygirl]

Dear All,

I hope you appreciate this article recently written by the mother of a 23 year old patient. This young woman is a patient I cared for in our Emergency Department recently. She was critically unwell, still is, and her mother has written an article outlining the need for education bursaries for nursing and medical staff after experiencing the care we provide first hand. She has also spoken about how frustrated she is regarding my hospitals very recent decision to close our staff car park - we were given 2 weeks notice.

For those who aren't familiar with the Australian health system, public healthcare is available to all and tertiary facilities are all public. You can elect to have private insurance and use it if you wish, however as a general whole, if you are critically unwell your care will be provided in a public major hospital. We also pay for our university education, albeit much less than what I believe fees are in North America.

Also, the cost of living in Australia, particularly Sydney has risen so much that the average Registered Nurse could only purchase a property in about 5% of suburbs on their own. If I lived alone I would currently be contributing 50% of my wage to my rent for a small one bedroom apartment.

I was honoured to have read this article written by her mother; as one of the nurses who resuscitated and cared for this poor young woman, and escorted her mother to the ICU from Emergency, it feels so good to be recognised for what we do everyday. Well done to all of us.

How a week in intensive care with my daughter changed me

[ktwlpn, LPN]

Touching.please update us regarding her progress,if you can

[RNsydneygirl]

I recently chased this case up; the exact cause of her sudden deterioration and seizures was never identified. She presented GCS 5 and was incredibly difficult to ventilate; initially CXR in Emergency showed complete white out of one lung and considerable patches on the other. The history was that she had been acting strangely that day, walking around in dirty pyjamas in the middle of the afternoon.. She then had a prolonged seizure and remained actively seizing on arrival despite paramedic intervention. As you can imagine, extensive testing was carried out in the ICU, including sending samples away to Japan and England for superior tests we were unable to perform in Australia. As nothing was found, I'm told viral meningitis was the working diagnosis. After two months in ICU she was transferred to the neurology floor. She is unable to speak and use her left arm but she can walk almost independently and is now in a rehab centre.

[ktwlpn, LPN]

Thanks for the update,very sad and scary.