Margot Condon is an NYU Langone Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse whose story “went viral” this past week. She was photographed in her efforts to preserve the life of an eight-hour-old infant, as part of a team that evacuated the child down nine flights of stairs. Click the image above to go to the CNN interview with Condon. Such extreme life-saving tasks may not be in a nurse’s job description, but they go to the heart of the nursing profession and its ethos of caring and commitment.
This is just one story from Hurricane Sandy. We know there are many others we will be hearing about in the coming weeks. Here’s a short description from the CNN page with the video:
In the photo, she’s holding a small baby…and pumping air into its lungs outside the hospital during the emergency evacuation. Backup generators failed during Superstorm Sandy and the medical staff was tasked with safely transferring everyone to other facilities.
It took a team of at least six people to get the fragile patient safely down nine flights of stairs in the dark. They had to coordinate their movements, each with a different job. The doctor was there, the security guard with an oxygen tank, the father and others assisting. The baby’s mother was still hospitalized during the dramatic mission.
Condon, a nurse for 36 years, says she remained focused on each step they needed to take, but has never seen anything like it.
I love this story and followed it all the way from Australia! Makes me proud to be a nurse!