Ronald Hingle
Piedmont Newnan Hospital
If not by chance, Michael Zimmermann, Hingle’s director in the hospital’s Emergency Department, may have never heard of his employee’s act of heroism. It was a county EMS worker who told Zimmerman the story.
On a chilly November morning on his way home from work, Hingle noticed a cloud of dust hovering in the air along a curving rural road in western Coweta County. The military service veteran instantly knew something was wrong, and went to inspect the situation.
An SUV had left the road and rolled down an embankment. The vehicle had become somewhat wrapped around a tree, and the elderly female driven had been tossed around inside the SUV. With a broken arm, a severe facial laceration and head injury, the woman remained in dire need.
As fate would have it, a friend of Hingle’s, who happens to be a firefighter and a flight paramedic, came upon the scene just after Hingle.
“By the grace of God, he showed up after me,” Hingle said, “and the two of us got her stabilized until the ambulance arrived, got the IV started and sent her on her way for a flight to Atlanta.”
It was this act of service, Zimmermann wrote in his nomination, that proved to be a contributing factor in saving the woman’s life.
On being a nurse 24/7:
“In this kind of work, you tend to have a moral obligation written into your DNA to do those kinds of things that help people. That’s just the kind of people who work in this profession.”
