A nurse’s watchful eye makes all the difference
The change was easy to miss.
Amanda Allen, a nurse in the emergency department at UCHealth Parkview Medical Center, was documenting care when she noticed something different on a patient’s monitor. The patient’s heart rate, which had been steady in the 80s, had begun creeping higher.
There was no alarm. Nothing on the monitor signaled an immediate concern. But Allen was paying attention.
“I just had a feeling, because that doesn’t normally happen,” Allen said.
She immediately went to the patient’s room and discovered the patient was having a seizure. Allen alerted the physician and quickly administered medication to stop the seizure. Within seconds, other members of the emergency department team were there to help.
It was the kind of moment when experience, observation and instinct came together.
For Allen, it also reinforced something she believes is essential in nursing: Know what is normal for your patient.
“The most important thing is having a baseline on all your patients,” Allen said. “You know their trend. So when an anomaly happens, you’re able to act.”
Allen has spent her entire six-year nursing career in the emergency department at UCHealth Parkview Medical Center. Before becoming a nurse, she worked as an emergency medical technician in California. Her interest in healthcare began much earlier, inspired by an uncle who was a paramedic.
“When I was a young child, every time I saw him, I would beg him to tell me stories of his calls and the patients that he would see,” Allen said. “That always stuck with me and led me to become an EMT and then a nurse.”
Allen is quick to point out that responding to emergencies is never the work of one person.
“The ER is well equipped to handle emergencies, so it’s not just me,” she said. “The second I see something’s wrong, within seconds, I have a team around me.”
That combination of individual attention and teamwork is exactly what caught the attention of Lauren Lane, who nominated Allen for recognition through the Celebrating You platform.
“Amanda’s quick action and attention to detail caught the patient having an active seizure and was able to initiate a quick staff response,” Lane wrote. “The patient was stabilized quickly.”
Sometimes extraordinary care begins with a dramatic intervention. Other times, it begins with something much smaller — a number on a screen, a subtle change and a nurse who knows when to take a closer look.