ED team jolted when ‘it’s one of your own’

A GOLD Coast doctor has opened up about the devastation felt by hospital staff when treating one of their own, following the shock death of a nurse last month.

In February, Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) nurse Lisa Davey passed away, after she was found on her Arundel property with horrific head injuries.

In a heartfelt and honest blog post, GCUH emergency ward doctor Shahina Braganza details the pain and sense of duty felt by emergency health workers who were stuck in an awful experience of attending to a colleague.

While she does not specify that she was treating Ms Davey, the blog reveals an insight into the situation that would have faced staff in February.

“The resus buzzer goes off,” she writes in her health care worker wellness blog.

“Two minutes from arrival is a patient who is unconscious. We know the drill.

“We have done this countless times – resuscitation is the core of our core business.

“About five minutes in, the administrative staff have completed transferring the patient’s details from her wallet into the paperwork. A senior nurse in the resus room looks at the patient ID sticker, looks up at the patient and says to me, ‘This is one of our nurses’.

“Something shifts imperceptibly.

“But we have a job to do, and we know how to do it well,” she writes.

Dr Braganza goes on to describe how they worked to stabilise the patient.

She details the busy ED and the staff who work to comfort each other while diligently continuing to work through their grief and horror.

“Meanwhile, the ED continues to rumble as usual, relentless, and oblivious to what is happening – what is happening to us. We are looking after one of our own: the prognosis is grim; the circumstances are uncertain,” Dr Braganza wrote.

“This response is as yet undefined, but what we do know is that we are distressed.

“The ED family now has a job to do, and it does it well.

“Our ICU team, whom we have flogged all evening with the other sick patients, move mountains to transfer our colleague out of our ED and into their unit before our night shift arrives. At handover, they assure us that our friend ‘will be treated like royalty’. I know that she already has been. And I also know that we have treated her no different to any other patient – because we deliver world-class care to everyone.”

Some of the team then return on their day off to “support the ED family,” some sitting by the bed of their colleague, others just taking time to comfort one another.

“With ravaged and tearful faces, our team members hold hands, give each other hugs, and sit close. We share stories about our colleague – that she is a wonderful nurse; that she is funny and quirky; that she is resilient; that she has been so happy in recent times. We share stories about our ED family – how, somehow, we always manage to pull through, logistically and emotionally.

“We innately know that we have a phenomenal team, we are almost stubborn in this self-fulfilling belief. But on the occasion, where we truly have to pull together and deal with a harrowing situation, where the critically unwell person is someone we know and love, our innate knowledge manifests into reality.

“And that reality is what defines us as family.”