It was almost nine o’clock on Sunday morning and Joyce DeZutti was running late. Along with her daughters Giovanna and Antoinette and her friend Andrea Skillman, Joyce had just enjoyed a weekend of pampering at the spa and was headed back to the airport. Suddenly, her limo slowed and swung out to the side, veering out of the way to drive around a car accident. Out the window, the women saw two vehicles, one looking banged up and the other flipped over completely. Joyce turned to her daughter and asked if she’d seen an ambulance at the scene. As Giovanna responded that she had not, Joyce immediately yelled, “Stop now!” to the limo driver, lunging toward the partition to get his attention.
“There was no way that limo was going by that accident,” says DeZutti. “Even if I had to go through that partition, we were stopping. There was no question. We were supposed to be there.”
A series of very fateful events brought Joyce DeZutti to that Hershey highway that morning. Joyce, a psychiatric nurse at Linden Oaks Hospital, was more than 700 miles away from where she lives and works in Naperville, Illinois. About two months earlier, she was randomly picked out of more than 6,700 entrants as the winner of the California Casualty ‘Give a Nurse a Break Getaway.’ The grand prize was a two-day trip to the Hershey Hotel and Spa in Pennsylvania, a relaxing reward and much-deserved break from the daily grind of nursing. That morning, Joyce was headed back to the airport after a weekend of pampering and relaxation. If things had gone according to plan, Joyce would have missed the accident altogether.
“We wanted to get an early start. So we were really trying to leave. But my friend Andrea does Florence Nightingale presentations and she had her full costume with her and wanted to have pictures taken before we left,” remembers DeZutti. “So we got the pictures and got delayed by quite a bit. By the time we got in the limo, we had been rushed a bit and I was a little upset.”
As it turns out, Joyce DeZutti was exactly where she needed to be at exactly the right time. First responders had yet to arrive at the scene when the limo pulled up to the accident. Joyce, who was supposed to be getting a break from nursing life, suddenly felt herself thrust right back into the action.
“I threw my purse at my older daughter and said, ‘Get my kit out.’ And I ran to the scene, hollering out ‘I’m a nurse and my friend is too,’” says Joyce. After double-checking that someone had already called 911, she ran over to the flipped car. “I could see there was a woman hanging upside-down by her seatbelt. She was awake. I talked to her and said, ‘I’m Joyce and I’m a nurse.’”
The driver, an elderly woman, told Joyce she was having trouble breathing. The car smashed in around her and glass littering the asphalt, her seatbelt and coat making it difficult to breathe. So Joyce crawled in beside her.
“I had no problem getting in to her. I was laying on the ground next to the car with my hand reaching to her. She said she couldn’t breathe, which was no surprise with the angle her head was at,” recalls Joyce. “She had a big, heavy down pink coat, so I unzipped that and pulled her clothes away from her neck and put my hand on her chest and lifted up so she could lift her chin and she could breathe. I held her like that and just talked to her, holding her hand.”
While Joyce was worried about the patient, her daughter Giovanna was standing nearby worrying about her mother. Joyce had severely injured her arms while working with the horses she uses as therapy for her patients. Surgeries over the years had left pins and plates in her arms.
“I knew she could get hurt, too,” says Giovanna. “I have no doubt that if my mom didn’t have this problem with her arm, she could do it just fine because she’s a strong lady- mentally and physically. But I was concerned about her hurting herself and her being home and being in a lot of pain.”
But the adrenaline kept Joyce’s attention away from her own pain and focused on the patient. The woman asked Joyce to call her niece and asked if anyone else was hurt. As Joyce’s daughter Giovanna called the victim’s niece, firemen arrived at the scene. Meanwhile, Skillman, who works as nurse at the VA, explained to Joyce what was unfolding around her.
“It was like a Code Blue situation. Everyone has a job. I look back at what Joyce and I ended up doing, and it was sort of the same thing,” says Skillman. “She was doing the direct care and I was scoping out of the area and letting her know what the firemen were doing.”
A firefighter took Joyce’s place supporting the woman and Joyce slipped back out of the mangled car. But she wasn’t leaving.
“I said ‘I’m going to stay until they get her out of there,’’ remembers DeZutti. “I couldn’t leave not knowing. So I stayed.”
As firefighters used the “Jaws of Life” to cut away the passenger side of the car, a man in his fifties or sixties walked up to Andrea.
“He hands me a card of phone numbers to call and I grabbed the card, thinking they must be the patient’s phone numbers. He said they were and walked away,” says Skillman.
The man was the driver’s son. At the time, no one realized he had actually been in the car at the time of the accident.
“I asked if that was his mother and he said yes and that he was in there. He told me he had a seatbelt on. And a bystander confirmed he had helped get the man out of the car,” says DeZutti. So she went back into nurse mode. “I started talking to him really gently and I told him I was a nurse and wanted to check him. I did a head-to-toe and didn’t find anything tender and everything seemed fine.”
Firefighters put both occupants of the rolled car, the woman and her son, in C-collars on backboards and loaded them into the ambulance. But not before Joyce offered her final words of comfort.
“Joyce said she wanted to talk to her now that she was out of the car,” says Skillman. “But this patient was what my husband, a fireman, calls a ‘load and go.’ You don’t stick around. You put them in the ambulance and take off.”
So Joyce seized her moment, captured in this picture…
Photo Courtesy of Giovanna DeZutti, 2012
“I went to her and told her that her son was okay and that he was going to the hospital also to be checked over,” says DeZutti. “I said we had left messages with her family of where she was going to be.”
Joyce was the perfect person to pull up to the scene. A nurse for more than 30 years, she put herself through school by teaching taught EMTs and worked in a Trauma 1 Center and ICU. But to her daughter, Giovanna, up until that day she’d just been Mom.
“I’ve never seen my mom like that. My mom is my mom. My mom’s not a nurse to me,” says Giovanna. “But it was exciting watching her do it, because I’d never seen her doing anything like that. I’d seen maybe a call or two for a patient who was out of control, but this was totally different. It was a ‘bringing her back to the Emergency Room’ type of thing. She knew exactly what to do and what she was going to do ahead of time if this wasn’t working or that wasn’t working. It all came to her so fast. I could never do that. It was amazing. I see her more of a hero, now that I’ve seen her in action.”
But for Joyce, heroic action like this is the norm. This isn’t even the first time she’s stepped in to help an accident victim. When her kids were young, Joyce stopped to help another woman who was trapped upside-down in a rolled vehicle. She once witnessed a police officer get struck by a vehicle while directing traffic. She stopped to help him, too.
This story says something about nurses. We can try to give them a ‘break’ from their jobs. But stepping in and taking action to save lives is not just a part of their jobs. It’s a part of who they are.
Here’s where we need your help. When Joyce told us her story, we told her we would help her find out what happened to the woman and her son. But without knowing even the woman’s full name, although we believe her first name might be Jane, we’ve been unable to find her and check on her. If you know anyone in Pennsylvania, please pass Joyce’s story along and help us help this hero. After all, we figure it’s the least we can do to say ‘Thank You’ to this heroic nurse, Joyce DeZutti.
Do YOU know a Nurse, Firefighter, EMT, Peace Officer, or Educator Hero? Tell us about them!
To learn more about the Give a Nurse a Break Giveaway, click here.
Pictures from the Accident, The Hershey Spa, and the women in Washington D.C.:
All photos courtesy of Andrea Skillman and Giovanna DeZutti, 2012.
A big THANK YOU to all the ER nurses who help save and heal us during some of our most unexpected and frightening medical emergencies and to the Peds nurses whose healing hands help our littlest treasures (and comfort their frightened parents). You guys rock!
Like everyone else across the country, the violent deaths of 12 innocent people in an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre left me heartbroken.
My mind flooded with questions and my heart ached for every victim, every family member, every friend and every member of the Aurora community that was touched by this devastating tragedy.
I was inspired and heartbroken as, one by one, each victim’s story came out. The six-year-old who was out seeing a movie with her babysitter. The two young men who gave their lives to save their girlfriends. The heroic members of the Armed Services who died in that theatre.
The list goes on.
And now, a week out, the question remains: How do we go on?How do we heal?
This question is particularly true of a few certain groups of Heroes. Heroes whose role in responding to tragedies like Aurora story is often overlooked.
The police officers who responded to the horrific scene that night. Who had to put their personal feelings aside to professionally process the scene and eliminate any existing threats- including the booby trapped apartment of the suspect. More Here.
The paramedics who treated and transported victims. Who held it together despite seeing the carnage up close, triaged the 58 innocent people with injuries, and comforted them on their way to hospitals. More here.
The nurses and medical staff who continue to heal survivors. Who tirelessly support their patients down a long and tough road to recovery, answer the tough questions, and experience firsthand the pain, sorrow, and confusion of the victims and their families. More here.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like responding to that scene. The horror of the loss. The pain of injured. The questions of the survivors. So I looked to some of my favorite Police Officer, EMT and Nurse bloggers. I asked them what advice or words of support they could offer to their professional colleagues in this time of processing and healing.
In three posts below, I have posted some fantastic responses, thoughts, and resources from Police Blogger John Marx of Cops Alive, EMT Blogger Captain Morse of Rescuing Providence, and Nurse Blogger Keith Carlson of Digital Doorway.
Transporting the injured from the scene in Aurora was just the first step.
From there, they were received by the caring arms of the Nurses and medical staff in various Denver hospitals.
That early morning, survivors began the long and hard journey towards recovery.
And standing beside them are Nurses. Nurses who see first-hand the physical pain of survivors and the emotional pain of survivors, their families and their friends.
Nurses, too, must process their own grief as they struggle to understand this tragedy and support those whose survival is now in their hands.
Eric Young, Jr., a second baseman and outfielder for the Colorado Rockies who recently visited survivors in the hospital, said it best:
To hear more about tragic events such as Aurora from a Nursing perspective, I headed to Nurse Keith Carlson’s Nursing blog Digital Doorway.
Nurse Keith has written a beautiful post entitled “Of Tragedy, Heroism and Recovery.” While you’ll have to click on the link to see all of his thoughts and reflections, I thought I’d highlight some of his strongest statements here.
When events like this occur in our midst, we frequently do not consider the impact that it has on the first responders who initially respond to such traumatic events, as well as the hospital staff, surgeons and nurses who deal with the (often prolonged and painful) aftermath.
Since I’m a nurse who coaches and advises nurses on self care, burnout prevention and overall health and wellness, I’d like to take a moment to consider how nurses and their healthcare colleagues themselves react to such traumatic events, especially when standing on the front lines.
In the case of the Aurora massacre, one can only imagine what might be going through the minds of the nurses and other staff members of the hospitals on the receiving end of the racing ambulances. Were their friends and neighbors among the dead or injured? Would a colleague be one of the critical patients rushed from the scene in need of life-saving assistance? How would it feel to see a favorite teacher or local barista bloodied and fighting for her life as the sirens announced their arrival through the emergency department doors?
The ripple of trauma is wide in a scenario such as Aurora, and we hope that the paramedics, nurses, surgeons and others who treated—and are still treating—the injured are taking care of themselves even as they care for those in need of their professional skills and expertise.
Those frontline medical personnel need to remember to hydrate well, eat nutritious food, take time for self care, practice good sleep hygiene, and spend time away from work where the stresses of this traumatic event can be briefly set aside. For those who are prone to give until it hurts—and then give some more—it’s a high priority to get away, debrief with friends, family and colleagues, and allow the nervous system to recalibrate.
Nurse Keith has posted some really great tips and suggestions on his blog. What I have posted above is only a small slice of the insights he provides in his post. Please click here to read it in its entirety.
My sincere thanks to Nurse Keith for allowing me to discuss his tips and insights in this blog post.
Today’s TOP NURSING BLOG is run by a blogger who knows a thing or two about what it takes.
Today’s blog is….
Running a Hospital
Running a Hospital is a blog by the Former President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA.
(Again, this furthers my theory that bloggers are superhuman. How do they lead lives like this and find time to blog about it!?!)
Okay, okay… I know. This blog isn’t technically authored by a Nurse. But we selected it as a TOP Nursing Blog because we think it’s just that: A top blog for our nursing network to follow! Running a Hospital is a great place to hear about the latest in medical news, and how that may affect the day to day lives of nurses.
So we sat down with our CEO-turned-blogger to learn a little bit about what he blogs about and why!
How would you describe your blog? This is a blog by a former CEO of a large Boston hospital to share thoughts about hospitals, medicine, and health care issues.
What is the mission behind Running a Hospital? Advocacy for patient-driven care, eliminating preventable harm, transparency of clinical outcomes, and front-line driven process improvement.
Why did you start blogging? I had a very interesting job as CEO of a large academic medical center, and I thought it might be interesting for people to read about the kinds of issues our place and I were facing.
How long have you been writing on this particular blog? Since August 2006.
What’s your favorite thing to write about? Most favorite thing has been success stories, where nurses and other front-line staff accomplish great things in clinical settings.
What about least favorite? Continued lack of progress in reducing harm to patients.
Tell us a little bit about your blog ‘community’ … My blog community is represented by people of all backgrounds, in countries throughout the world. I am inspired by the stories they tell me about the kindness they show to patients and families and the comaraderie that share with one another. Their comments are often funny, as well as thoughtful.
What has been your best experience as a blogger? Actually meeting people around the world with whom I have become virtual friends. Once, I was in Mumbai, India and ended up having dinner with one such virtual friend, after several years of only electronic communication. This is the new version of pen pals!
What have you learned? OMG, I don’t have space to tell you. It would fill a book, er, a blog!
This post is a great summary of how I felt leaving the hospital, too.
If you win our Battle of the Blogs, to which charity will you donate your $200 winnings? Why? The BIDMC nurses scholarship fund, which helps support practicing nurses who want to go back to school for advanced training. Why? Well, that should be obvious. Here’s a post that describes some aspects of that.
(PACU nurses who volunteer to work providing first aid at Fenway Park during the Red Sox home games.)
Want to hear more about what it was like Running a Hospital or follow along with the latest in medical news? Follow on Facebook or Twitter!
To check out Running a Hospital, click here. To vote for your favorite nursing blog, click here!
Photo Courtesy of Giovanna DeZutti, 2012
