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- Title
Navigating Rough Seas— Keeping Our Head Above Water in a Flood and its Aftermath.
- Authors
Webb-Anderson, Karen; Ash, Marlene; Bangera, Shashi; Bent, Catherine; Daley, Patricia; Gallant, Audrey; Hughes, Pam; Isenor, Cynthia; Oates, Ken; Somers, Walter; Stride, Shannon; Watson, Andrew; White, Debrah
- Abstract
What happens when the only intensive care unit (ICU) in a high-acuity hospital needs to be resuscitated? Picture your average evening in the ICU. Nurses are just finishing their assessments. Families are at bedsides. Many of the allied health team have gone home for the day. You notice a trickle of water coming from the ceiling ... just in time to see a gush! This is the story of the flood and its aftermath. We will share our experiences of evacuating patients, families and equipment. We will describe how a sister unit a few city blocks away responded to make patients and staff welcome in difficult times. In the weeks that followed, the staff of the flooded unit was temporarily displaced in order to provide care for patients relocated to a number of temporary ICU locations, as well as providing emergency onsite care at the primary hospital site, where many high acuity services remained post-flood. There are lessons to be learned by sharing our individual and collective experiences that evening and in the days that followed. This story will demonstrate the capacity of ICU nurses to respond swiftly, appropriately and creatively. It will also reveal the im portance of camaraderie in our profession, and how central our work family is to our well-being and resilience. It will show the challenges to providing evidence-based, family-centred care in temporary ICU spaces, and our commitment to advocating for patients and families.
- Subjects
DISASTERS; EMERGENCY medical services; INTENSIVE care nursing; INTENSIVE care units; RESCUE work
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Critical Care Nursing, 2016, Vol 27, Issue 2, p33
- ISSN
2368-8653
- Publication type
Article