About Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, CFRN

Chief flight nurse at an international air ambulance service.

Nursing Reads: A Powerful New Novel Evokes Diverse Perspectives on an Organ Transplant

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By Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, chief flight nurse at Global Jetcare

The Heart, a new novel by Maylis de Kerangal, caught my attention with a cover art image suggestive of the vascular and as beautiful as an angiogram. Taking place over a 24-hour period, the novel describes a 19-year-old accident victim who suffers brain death and the people who are connected to the heart transplant that follows: his parents, the doctors and nurses, the recipient of the heart. As a nurse who’s seen the organ transplant process from a number of angles, I wasn’t sure how De Kerangal could possibly navigate such material.

But the novel, which has been ably translated from French, is both subtle and powerful, casting light on the complexity of every character, from the pre-accident vitality of Simon, the donor, to the conflicted gratitude of the heart recipient; from the inexperienced ICU nurse to the surgeons.

Two important characters are nurses, though they are only a part of the larger picture:

Cordelia Owl, Simon’s ICU nurse, is an inexperienced practitioner. She carries out her nursing tasks in a distracted, perfunctory manner, speaking aloud to the unresponsive Simon as she cares for him. In doing so, she inadvertently intensifies the anguish of his parents, who are standing nearby and struggling with the concept of brain death.

Though her behavior shocks the attending physician, she’s […]

2016-11-21T13:01:25-05:00February 29th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient experience|0 Comments
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Rightness: A Flight Nurse Taps Into the Universal Language of Nursing

“Immersed in a nursing role that I didn’t even know existed when I entered the profession, I find there to be a common language—one rooted in science but strongest in humanity and compassion, transcending culture, geography, and words.”

By Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, chief flight nurse at Global Jetcare

MarcyPhipps_Flight_NursingI’m standing in the doorway of our plane, watching our patient sleep and eyeing the monitor. The monitor’s beeps keep steady time and mix with the sounds of the pounding waves that batter the atoll.

We’ve stopped for fuel on this narrow runway that stretches down a spit of land in the Pacific. As the sun rises we snack on cold gyudon, a Japanese dish we picked up in Guam. It’s not the best breakfast, but somehow feels right—like a lot of other aspects of this job lately.

We’d started our mission in eastern Asia, picking up an American citizen who’d fallen ill in a city that didn’t cater to tourists and where almost no one spoke English.

While there, our crew’s handler—someone whose job it is to facilitate our lodging, transportation, and generally ease our way—had taken us to a dimly lit restaurant on a back street and treated us to a myriad of local delicacies, some of which I recognized, many of which I didn’t. My usual morning run had led me through parks and a street […]

2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00February 1st, 2016|nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Thanksgiving in the ICU: Woven into the Tapestry of Traditions

By Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN. Editor’s note: This post, originally published in 2011, remains as timely as ever. The author is now chief flight nurse at Global Jetcare.) 

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I’ll be working this Thanksgiving. I’ve worked so many Thanksgivings that the ICU feels woven into the tapestry of my own traditions. I don’t really mind; the cafeteria serves a fitting feast that’s embellished by the homemade treats we bring in, and although we won’t actually be watching it, the Macy’s parade will be on. Somehow, the smells and sounds I associate with the holiday will mix and mingle with the usual bustle of critical care, and it’ll feel like Thanksgiving. It’s actually a nice day to be at the hospital—for the nurses, that is.

For our patients and their families, I know hospital holidays fall far short. We have one patient, in particular, who’s been with us for a while. Her husband’s been a fixture at her side throughout her stay, and I expect to find him stationed there this Thanksgiving. Hospital turkey and television won’t give him the comfort or peace that he seeks, and I don’t know that he’ll be giving thanks. For many weeks I’ve watched him skirt a fine line between gratitude and despair; things could always be worse, but they could certainly be better.

When I stop to count my blessings, I’m overwhelmed. I belong to a profession that I’m passionate about—one that brings me great […]

2016-11-21T13:01:43-05:00November 25th, 2015|career, narratives, nursing perspective, patient engagement|2 Comments
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The Underlying Connection Is Nursing

Angel sculpture on grave marker photo by author

Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, ATCN, TNCC, an ICU nurse who recently took up flight nursing, is an occasional contributor to this blog.

I recently experienced a series of events that seemed interconnected and orchestrated.

It started with my usual morning run. I was jogging out of my neighborhood, already sweating in the summer heat and absorbed—coincidentally—in an audio podcast about trauma care, when I came upon a man sprawled in the middle of a usually very busy thoroughfare. His motorcycle, badly damaged, was lying on its side next to a car with a crumpled door panel. The accident had clearly just occurred—traffic hadn’t yet backed up and no sirens could be heard heralding imminent assistance.

I had the weird sensation that I’d been running to the accident all along. I held his C-spine and monitored his neuro status while an off-duty paramedic managed the scene. Unexpectedly, a cardiologist I sometimes work with emerged from a nearby café and held his fingers to the man’s radial pulse, and then several more off-duty paramedics arrived.

It seemed fortuitous to me at the time—not the accident, of course, but the proximity of medical personnel who were so quickly available. And I had the impression that, despite not having worn a helmet, the motorcycle rider would be okay. […]

2016-11-21T13:03:52-05:00September 22nd, 2014|career, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|12 Comments
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Flight Nursing Notes – The Feel of a Homecoming

Observations of an experienced ICU nurse and long-time AJN blogger who recently made the transition to flight nursing.

clouds-photo-from-airplaneMarcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, ATCN, TNCC, is an occasional contributor to this blog. Some details have been changed to protect patient privacy.

“We’ve been married for 58 years,” my patient’s wife says. “Fifty-eight years…”

She turns her attention from me and gazes out the window of the plane.

We are on a medevac flight, 35,000 feet over the Pacific en route to an urban, American hospital near “home.” Her husband is being transferred to receive aggressive care for a grave illness.

We collected him hours earlier from a hospital on a foreign island. Local paramedics picked my partner and me up from the barren, windy tarmac. As we sped to the hospital in the back of an ambulance with a cracked windshield, the driver turned to warn us that we were going to “the worst hospital in the city.”

“It’s open-air,” he told us, as he dodged mopeds and swerved through narrow, crowded streets.

This didn’t surprise me. I’d been forewarned that hospital conditions on many of these remote islands could be shocking when compared to American standards. It was something I’d been curious to see firsthand.

Yet when we picked our patient up, we found him in a small and clean room in an intensive care unit. Despite the paramedic’s prediction and […]

2016-11-21T13:04:17-05:00July 14th, 2014|career, Nursing|3 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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