NEW YORK NURSE: September 2007
by Rolando Tomas Infante
The morning of March 7, 2007, seemed like routine day for the veteran staff members of Mount Sinai’s Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit. Just after 8 a.m., while the nurses were taking care of bed-bound neurosurgical patients – many of whom could not communicate verbally – smoke suddenly started seeping out of one of the vacant rooms.
“At first, I thought one of our machines had started malfunctioning,” said Mignon Guishard-Pole, the clinical nurse manager. “What we didn’t know was that there was a raging fire consuming the floor beneath us.”
Guishard-Pole and the staff of seven nurses sprang into action alerting the hospital’s fire marshal and security of the increasing smoke in their unit, which is on the building’s eighth and highest floor. With no immediate response from the fire marshal, the nurses, on their own initiative, sprang into an ad-hoc rescue operation to safely remove the patients and transport them out of the smoke-filled area.
“We had no time to plan anything,” said Jacqueline Callender. “Just like in any other emergency, we looked into each other’s eyes without saying anything and knew what we had to do.”
“We’ve been together for a long time,” said Guishard-Pole. “We have gone through births, deaths, weddings, and the occasional divorce. In having such a close unit, we placed our priority in getting the patients out and then making sure that we all made it out of the unit safely.”
The nurses worked in concert to unhook patients from the oxygen machines and move them out of their rooms. As the smoke kept intensifying, the nurses moved out 13 patients within 15 minutes.
“I never knew that we could move so fast,” said Beatrice Davis. “The smoke made visibility poor but amazingly nobody bumped into one another. We kept making sure that no patient was left behind.”
After transporting three patients by herself, Callender collapsed and was taken the emergency room for smoke inhalation. Slightly disoriented, Callender kept asking about the condition of a specific patient that she had moved out of the unit. Several other nurses also went to the emergency room that day.
A teary Guishard-Pole recalls how during her final run transporting oxygen tanks to the staging area for patients, she was forbidden by security from reentering her unit. “I was begging security to let me through since my staff and second family was in there. I needed to make sure they all got out.”
Once she was reassured that the unit was cleared, she returned to the PACU staging area and reunited with her weary colleagues, who continued caring for patients without regard to their own physical and mental condition.
“That night and the days that followed, we called each other and talked and cried about what we went through and what could have happened,” said Denise Gaynor-Mercado.
After the fire, several patients and their families returned to thank the nurses for their bravery. In recognition of their heroism, NYSNA awarded the Mount Sinai NSICU RNs with special plaques that salute their brave actions on behalf of their patients and each other.
“We’ve had relatives come up to us and say that they felt safe in our hands,” said Sabrina Chan-Look. “The patients themselves have expressed tremendous gratitude for moving them so quickly out of harm’s way.”