Small Miracles
Ob/Gyn nurse helps high-risk obstetrical patients and their babies through
difficult pregnancies
By
Phil McPeck
September 16, 2002
There is no good way to tell a woman that Connie Wright, RN, is going to be her nurse because it means that something has gone wrong-sometimes terribly wrong-with her pregnancy.
Under Wright's care, though, in a special 13-bed unit of Tacoma (Wash.) General Hospital, miracles are born to high-risk obstetrical patients. Some patients are critically ill with diabetes or hypertension; others have preterm labor or ruptured membranes early in their pregnancy.
In one case, it was so early that physicians gave the baby virtually no chance. That mother was hospitalized in the Trendelenburg position at 17 weeks, praying that her fluid would reaccumulate. The baby was delivered at 28 or 29 weeks. "We call her our miracle baby," Wright said.
This is one of dozens of success stories that Wright and her colleagues share in snapshots on a bulletin board to encourage patients and maintain staff morale.
Wright began her career as a psychiatric nurse but studied obstetrics with the Army at Fort Lewis, Wash., and soon afterward adopted women's health as her specialty.
"I can't see myself ever getting totally away from OB, but I think about things that are physically less demanding, as all of us aging nurses are doing," she said.
Wright said she and her colleagues recently were talking about the nursing shortage and the headlines it makes. "Everybody is talking about money as the issue. It has nothing to do with money. It's staffing," she said.
"You couldn't offer me $100,000 a year to go work on a med/surg floor with staffing the way it is. It boils down to being physically and emotionally exhausted from the hard work and not being able to take care of patients. We don't want more money, we want help."
At 55, Wright said she is excited to be studying for certification as a sexual assault nurse examiner, a fast-growing specialty that will keep her close to women's health as she nears retirement.
High-risk obstetrical patients come to Tacoma General from Seattle, south nearly to Portland, Ore., and the Pacific Ocean to the Cascade Mountains.
Almost without exception, they are ill-prepared for weeks in a hospital, Wright said. There is financial hardship, being separated from other children and a peculiar combination of boredom and fear.
"They'll have days and days of incredible boredom sitting in bed, just nesting, waiting until it's safe to have their baby. And they have that daily, almost hourly, fear or expectation that something is going to go terribly wrong with their baby," she said.
Wright and the other RNs, usually two per shift as well as an LPN and ancillary staff for six to eight patients, fight anxiety with education: written material, videos and talking. "We spend 24 hours a day with them talking about their diagnoses and what's going on. We're very good," she said.
Wright said former patients, including the one with the "miracle baby," often return to visit.
"We have a patient right now who's going to be one of those memorable patients," she said. The woman is 41 years old and unexpectedly pregnant with her first child after being married for 21 years. She had a mastectomy two years ago as treatment for breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy and radiation. She was admitted to the unit at 23 weeks with ruptured membranes.
"She's just one of those people who's very compliant with everything we ask of her, and is willing to do anything it takes to keep this baby," Wright said. "Statistically, she's going to be OK."
Time not only is on the side of the pregnant women, but it also works for Wright and the other RNs in forging relationships.
"The other kind of patients that we get a lot of good feelings about are the patients who come in and nobody likes, that everybody goes, 'Oh no, a druggie or a homeless person' or something like that," Wright said.
"They come in and they're filthy and ugly and they treat us ugly. But within a matter of days, they turn around and see that we treat them respectfully and that we really care about them and the health of their baby.
"A lot of them will come back and tell us how much it meant to get
the treatment," she said.