It was a heartbreaking moment for a New Hampshire nurse.
A nurse was undergoing a training session to treat a heart attack when she suffered a life-threatening condition herself — and her colleague jumped in to save her.
Andy Hoang, a first-year nurse at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, recalled how he began to feel dizzy and sit down during a course in November.
“That’s the last thing I remember. I woke up to a room full of doctors and nurses,” Hoang told the Associated Press.
His medical colleagues ditched the mannequin and acted with a real patient.
“Someone checked his carotid, one of his femoral (arteries), and he had no pulse,” instructor Lisa Davenport said, adding that the nurse started CPR and issued the dreaded “code blue” for emergency teams.
“What’s really stressful about the situation is that we’ve never had a true blue code in the middle. We train for them all the time,” Davenport added.
Andy Hoang, a nurse in New Hampshire, was saved by a colleague when he suffered a heart attack while learning how to treat it. AP nurse Andy Hoang was saved by a colleague when he suffered a heart attack while learning how to treat it. AP
In another lucky break, a nearby critical care team quickly connected Hoang to a defibrillator for monitoring, inserted an IV line and put him on oxygen.
A doctor and another nurse then rushed in with a car called the accident, which was filled with emergency equipment, while Hoang woke up in the ER after a terrifying 15 minutes.
“It worked out, but it was a little scary for all of us,” Davenport said. “You don’t expect that to happen with someone as young as Andy.”
“I woke up to a room full of doctors and nurses,” Hoang said after he was rescued. AP
Hoang, who has returned to duty, agrees.
“I would say I’m an average healthy 23-year-old,” she says, adding that she exercises and eats well. “I’m on my feet 12, 13 hours a day at work, so I want to make sure that I’m in good shape for that.”
Hoang added that before the day of the incident, he had also fainted several times – the first after he had not eaten and his blood sugar was low, and the second when he had a stomach ache.
“So, nothing like this, nothing so far,” said the nurse, who grew up in Vietnam and came to the US in 2016 as a student and earned a nursing degree in Michigan.
Hoang poses with colleagues Lisa Davenport, left, and Justina Terino. AP
Cardiac arrest — the sudden loss of heart function — causes more than 436,000 deaths in the US each year, according to the American Heart Association.
It is different from a heart attack, which occurs when blood flow to the heart is blocked.
A person can have a heart attack after having a heart attack, but other conditions can also disrupt the heart’s rhythm and lead to arrest, including having thickened heart muscle or cardiomyopathy, according to the AHA.
The life-threatening experience has strengthened her relationship with another nurse, whom she now considers her best friend.
“We basically went through this whole life-or-death experience,” he said.
“It really changed my perspective on how I look at life, like ‘Hug your family longer,'” Hoang said.
“Tell them you love them, because it might be the last time you say it to them. And appreciate life for what it has been given. It’s precious, and I didn’t realize how precious it was until I almost lost it,” he added.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
