Acts of kindness put the ‘care’ in patient care
By Heidi Lutz
One of the tenets of care at UTMB is compassion for patients and their families, and nowhere is that more evident than in the countless stories of UTMB Hospitals and Clinics staff going the extra mile to make a patient feel special.
Chen, a patient in the Blocker Burn Unit, inspired his care team to go that extra mile for him as well this year when they arranged for him to meet Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets.
“We have worked hard for over a year as a burn team to get Chen into this kind of position,” said Fallon Stamps, a nurse in the Blocker Burn Unit who helped arrange the trip to the Houston Rockets game for Chen. “We have given him the ability to enjoy life again.”
Stamps had been working months to find a way to take Chen to a Houston Rockets game. He was a basketball fan and Stamps thought it would be an extraordinary outing for her patient. But instead of simply getting tickets to a game, Stamps went that extra mile, contacted the Rockets organization and arranged for Chen to be on the court during warm-up and even meet Ming.
“It was great,” Stamps said. “I almost wanted to cry when I saw his face and he would say ‘for me?’ He could not believe it.”
But for Stamps, the joy of seeing one of her patients so happy and full of life again is what her work is all about.
“If there is ever a moment that I think I am losing my passion for burn care, I will remember this day with Chen and how happy he was. It is days like this that I love my job and the people that I work with. I want to say thank you to every member of the burn team—without you this young man would not have made it this far.”
Like the burn unit, patients in Children’s Hospital can sometimes spend weeks or months receiving treatments in the hospital. During these extended stays, the hospital staff becomes an extended family.
Such is the case of one little boy born just more than a year ago and who has spent that entire first year in the hospital.
During that time, nurses and other clinicians have watched as Devin reached those important first-year milestones, and watched as he had good days and bad days, and watched as his smile lit up the faces of anyone who met him.
Each month, Children’s Hospital hosts a birthday party for patients celebrating a birthday in the hospital. But for Devin, the staff went that extra mile and hosted a special first birthday party for him.
“It is really difficult to say how much Devin means to me because it is almost impossible to put into words,” said Teri Tullous, a pediatric occupational therapist who worked with Devin for his first seven months. “He was my patient from the day he was born until he was about ready to leave the PICU for the first time. Anyone that has met him or meets him falls in love with him. It is impossible to explain his presence. He has brought me so much joy.”
Devin is well known at Children’s Hospital, especially among the nursing staffs of the CRCU, the ISCU and the PICU, whose lives have truly been touched by the young child’s presence at the hospital.
“Devin is ‘our’ baby and we have much love to share with him,” said Julie Tavarez-Bunyan.
Dottie Jones, a nurse in the ISCU, took care of Devin when he was an infant. But she can tell you all of the little things he loves, like being mesmerized by the character Nemo, or how he loves to dance to music.
“He is the sweetest baby and that is amazing since he has spent his entire life in the hospital,” Jones said. “It only takes meeting him once to absolutely fall in love with him.”