Editor’s note: In our excitement over the AJC’s annual Celebrating Nurses awards, we managed to leave Kay’s story out of last month’s Pulse. While we regret the error, this mistake gave us an excuse to chat with her, which is always fun. Here is a brief update from Kay, along with the original story about why she was nominated and selected for the award. Congratulations, Kay!
Pulse: What exciting things have you done lately?
Kay: On the work front, we completed a total EMR conversion, with an “exciting” go-live on June 1, and we gradually brought up the entire department. We stayed on dual systems, paper and EMR, for several days. For us, patient care and safety is always first, so if using the new system was slowing anyone down, they could switch back over to paper.
Pulse: How about on the personal front?
Kay: I’m a huge rock fan – love the classics from the sixties and early seventies. When I left the Celebrating Nurses ceremony, I hopped in the car with a good travelling friend and we went on a fun road trip to Cleveland Ohio to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! We spent two whole days – 16 hours – roaming the museum. I loved it, especially their exhibit about rock festivals. We drove back through West Virginia and Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley and on down to Charlotte, and that was a wonderfully relaxing drive home.
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In Kay Hall’s 34 years in the emergency room, she’s encountered nearly every imaginable crisis to challenge her sharp set of nursing and critical-thinking skills. But a recent patient at Northeast Georgia Health System’s (NGHS) Gainesville hospital demanded much more.
“I heard the staff was having difficulty with a man who had come in,” recalled Hall, the ER operations manager. “People were really at the end of their ropes about how to deal with him. I quickly realized I needed to become less of a manager and more of a nurse.”
The patient, a 60-something homeless man who lived in various hotels, had been seen for a knee injury that forced him into a wheelchair. That left him unable to care for himself or work, and when he ran out of money, he was thrown out of his hotel.
“When he arrived here, all he had was a sack of belongings,” said Hall.” We worked to get him into another facility and even transported there, but he refused to stay since his smoking was limited there. Now he was back with us, and we were trying to help, but he refused our care.”
Later, Hall heard the man had been accompanied to a bus stop near the hospital and left to fend for himself. “I didn’t think that was the best solution,” she said. “So I had security retrieve him and kept him in the ER for as long as I could. Then after spending time with him, I determined that smoking wasn’t his real issue; his fear was losing independence. To a gentleman in his 60s, a nursing home meant being sent off to die.”
Within three days, Hall had helped track down the man’s family and arranged for more congenial living arrangements. “He’s in a good place now; it just took spending time with him and understanding his fears,” she said.
For co-worker Karen Watts, there was no “just” about Hall’s dedication.
“Kay is an angel - that is what the homeless man would tell you,” she wrote. “When others could do nothing else, Kay took the time to talk to him, listen to him, and become his advocate. And this occurred while managing high volumes and exhausted staff. Regardless, Kay made it her goal to find an acceptable disposition for the patient. What a great example of ‘respectful compassion,’ one of NGHS’ core values.”
For Hall, a sad situation was the chance to show that compassion. “You just can’t give up on people,” she said.
