Great Catch winners announced

David Harden and Sladjana Pokrajac, Emergency Department technicians, received Great Catch Awards for their close attention to patient care. Harden was with a patient who had just returned from a CT scan when he noticed that the patient, who was previously responsive, now appeared significantly less so. Harden escalated his concerns to the nurse, who called the Rapid Response Team. The patient was intubated and transferred to the Medical-Coronary Intensive Care Unit (MICU) for lifesaving care.

Pokrajac was working with a patient from a memory care unit who came in with knee and leg pain on one side. After an initial evaluation did not reveal a significant problem, Pokrajac noticed the patient’s ankle was red and painful after removing her shoe. Pokrajac advocated for an X-ray, which confirmed a broken ankle.

Dianne Braatz, RN, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) demonstrated exceptional high reliability behaviors while caring for an infant. Braatz noted that the infant’s oxygen saturation had dropped to 83 percent, yet the monitor did not sound an alarm. Braatz promptly responded to the infant’s clinical needs and checked the monitor’s settings. After discovering that the low oxygen saturation parameter had been incorrectly set to 80 percent, she reviewed all alarm parameters and found that the high respiratory rate parameter was also incorrect. Braatz immediately restored all alarm settings to standardized safety parameters, ensuring reliable monitoring and preventing potential delays in recognizing clinical deterioration for a vulnerable infant.