Three of our staff nurses recently became superheroes for rescuing a Doha resident from untimely death while aboard an Air India flight, one hour into their trip from Mangalore to Doha.
The nurses – Shally K. Philipose from Emergency Department, Zenith Saldanha from the Private Nursing Service and Saritha Pierera from the Mental Health Service, were coincidentally flying from India back to Qatar when an urgent request for medical practitioners onboard was announced from the cockpit. Despite not having the necessary equipment, with only their professional training and a strong commitment to help others in distress, the nurses swung into action and started an urgent clinical intervention on the 63-year-old passenger, who was at the time unconscious.
“It was one hour into our flight when an announcement was made from the cockpit calling for urgent help for a passenger who is sick. He was unconscious when we saw him. So we tried to keep him in slide line position in order to keep his airways open and prevent him from choking on his own saliva because there was no instrument to intubate him,” they recalled.
They also recounted how they struggled to keep him alive by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on him with the assistance of a male passenger who is not a healthcare professional.
“We were only able to perform CPR on him to get his pulse back while also administering oxygen to keep him alive. We couldn’t do more than massage his chest to stimulate his breathing because we didn’t know his medical history and we couldn’t administer any medications on him. When he regained consciousness at a stage (because he became unconscious again before landing), he managed to inform us that he is diabetic and hypertensive. So we gave him a little sugar suspecting he could be experiencing hypoglycemia. Also, knowing his history helped us to make the best guess of the gravity of his condition so we requested for an emergency landing to the nearest airport where he could get care quickly. Thankfully the pilot followed our recommendation and we landed in Muscat where an ambulance was waiting to transfer him to a hospital.”
Though the journey from Mangalore to Doha that was supposed to last for only three hours, it took the nurses up to seven hours to get back to Doha; yet they felt very pleased to have been able to help keep the man alive despite his serious condition.
“We couldn’t even feel that the flight was delayed because we were engaged throughout making sure he did not die on board and while transiting him to the hospital. In fact, while landing we couldn’t sit in our seats because we felt he might fall off if he is left by himself as he was unconscious again. So we had to prop him up during the journey and kneel down by his side and front to secure him while the plane landed.”
Ms Nadya Al Anzi, Executive Director of Nursing of Private Nursing Services and Home Healthcare Services, said, “We are very proud of our nurses for showing such courage and compassion in what was an extremely challenging situation. Their professionalism, along with their commitment to doing whatever they could to help save a patient, is commendable. This professional and caring behavior reflects the work and personal ethics of our nurses at HMC.”
When the nurses arrived back in Doha they were greeted by the son of the patient who advised them that his father was responding well to treatment in the hospital in Muscat.
Philipose, who is shortly returning to India for good, has served HMC for 14 years while Saldanna and Pierera have been working at Hamad for 13 years and one year respectively.
