Tell me about your first save as a nurse

[warrior woman]

In honor of Nurse's Week I would like to salute all the wonderful nurses in this country and abroad. RN'S and LPN's stand up and take a well deserved bow, for you touch and save lives everyday. Which leads me to ask When was your first save as a nurse, andhow did you feel afterward? Happpy? Scared? about to barf? All of the above??? Please share your first save stories. I'm in need of a little inspiration. Love to all, Warrior Woman.:)

[ScarlettRN]

I can't remember the first one....time and age does that to you. I do remember one of my favorite ones. I had been in the ER less than 6 months. Small ER with 4 beds. It was one of those days when everything is going wild and I had been called in early just to cover all the over-run. There were pts in Xray and stuck in the hall, etc. and because at the moment I was the only one free, I was asked to check on the man who had just walked into triage. Chest pain. I took one look at him and all that drilling from an excellent preceptor took over. NUMBER 1 get that man on a monitor and see the heart and don't worry about anything else right now. I didn't have a datascope in triage, so I had to go into the chaos and pull one out of the far corner, tripping over the 6 people who were prepping the guy in the middle bed for the helicopter, and get back and hook him up. ST elevation....fireman's hat. I come out of triage to get whatever supplies I need to start his workup and all the time I am calling out " ST elevation in triage! Chest pain in triage" and grabbing supplies. I put his feet up on the other chair and proceeded to ASA and NTG and start IV and draw blood....the ER doc happened to walk past the door and I grabbed his arm and literally turned his body toward the monitor to get him to look at it and all of a sudden, the green light went on. We got the nearest bed cleared out (no idea what they did with that patient) and we got him started on Retavase and were able to get him stabilized in less than an hour.

On occasion when we are sitting around talking about the hairy scary days, that one still comes up, and I still feel good about it, cause it was all so new and it was a good catch.

Ya know, in spite of the ambulances, some of the worst stuff walks in the door on it's own...

[healingtouchRN]

hey scarlettrn, that was a good save, reminds me of working in a lttle 12 bed ER, seeing 60 pts a shift, man, oh, man do ya earn your dollar!!!!!