Nurse of the Week May Parsons – who delivered the world’s first Covid jab on December 8, 2020 – was among the recipients of the George Cross Award at Windsor Castle (a setting also calculated to cast the White House in the shade) on Tuesday. The award, created by King George VI to recognize brave civilians in WWII Britain, was bestowed in honor of UK health care providers’ “courage, compassion, and dedication in circumstances of extreme danger.” In addition to Parsons, the award was also presented to her sister and fellow nurse Joanna Hogg, the first person in Northern Ireland to receive the vaccine and one of the first nurses to administer the life-saving shots.
Parsons recently earned an MSc in Global Healthcare Management at the Coventry University School of Nursing Midwifery and Health and is a Modern Matron for Respiratory at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire Trust. She moved to the UK from the Philippines in the early 00s and has been a nurse in the UK Midlands district for about 18 years.
A shot seen round the world
[foogallery id=”62932″]
When her turn in the spotlight arrived in late 2020, the Coventry nurse found out just a day before her big moment. And initially, she said, “I assumed it [the shot] was going to be the first in the West Midlands. I didn’t realize until afterward that it was the first in the country, never mind the world!”
The choice of Parsons was apropos. As a committed participant in her hospital’s flu Peer Vaccinator program, she held a three consecutive year record for having administered more flu jabs than any other person on the staff, with a personal best in which she vaccinated 140 patients in a single day.
Parsons put her one-day warning about the history-making shot to good use. The person scheduled to receive the world’s first Covid jab was 90-year-old Margaret Keenan, so Matron Parsons visited her patient and tried to put her at ease before she bared her arm to the needle for the world to see. She told a Royal College of Nursing reporter, “I went to see Margaret to build a rapport with her, making sure that she was aware the vaccine was new, and that there’d be a lot of press there.” Parsons added little comforting touches the next day as well, encouraging Keenan to wear her favorite color and helping her get her hair right before meeting the cameras. She recalled, “She [Keenan] was keen to have it – she wanted to get back to normal, see her grandchildren and the rest of her family.”
“It’s all about integrity”
After the momentous public jab, Parsons dove into the Midlands rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine, “managing the vaccination hub – the flow, mixing the vaccine,” as well as “staffing – recruiting people, training them, making sure they’re assessed properly and have the right information to give to patients.”
As a nurse, her role in encouraging vaccination seems obvious to her. “As a nursing profession, we have a relationship with patients where they trust us. It’s important for the rollout because we want them to be able to say, ‘Tell me straight, what will this do to me?’ I say to my family: I’m not going to tell you to have it if I wouldn’t have it myself. It’s all about integrity.”
Like New York’s Sandra Lindsay, who received the first US Covid jab six days after her, Margaret Keenan has persistently failed to experience frightening or bizarre side effects from her historic jab. She has apparently not been surveilled via a sinister 5G network courtesy of Bill Gates, and her grandchildren must have been dismayed to learn that magnetic toys did not adhere to her skin. Instead, when she got her booster last September, Keenan, now 91 years old, enjoyed her moment of fame and expressed immense relief to see the efficacy of the vaccines.
After she and her famous nurse reunited for their booster shots and enjoyed their first hug, Keenan remarked, “I’m happy now that I can be free, it’s like the good old times. It was great to have May here, we have become a double act! It was such big news all around the world.” Then, with a lack of sympathy one might expect from a woman who never feared that forks and spoons might suddenly start sticking to her arms, she added, “Go and get the jab, it will save lives. I don’t really know what stops people from having it because it’s so quick. Do go and get your vaccination!”
“She poured her heart into helping patients and keeping her fellow nurses safe.”
—President Joseph Biden, as he draped a Presidential Medal of Freedom around the neck of Sandra Lindsay, DHSc, MS, MBA, RN, CCRN-K, NE-BC.
“Thank you for inspiring us.”
The impact her example had on vaccine-hesitant Americans can’t be measured, but Sandra Lindsay herself has heard directly from people who say that watching the Jamaican-born nurse persuaded them to get their shots. Last year, while on a visit to the Jamaican Embassy, a woman recognized her and thanked her profusely. She and her family had not intended to be vaccinated—until they saw Lindsay getting that first jab on TV. After seeing the nurse’s confident mien, she said, “We all went and made an appointment. So I want to thank you so much for inspiring us.”
That sort of recognition can be a force for good, and Lindsay is surely one of the best-known living nurses in the United States (and in Jamaica, of course!). It’s become a milestone in the history of the pandemic and a powerful symbol of what it means to be a nurse: the image of her serene face wrapped in a pale blue surgical mask, her expressive brown eyes gazing into the distance as she extends her arm to receive the first Covid-19 jab in the US.
Like most people who become symbols, she is not unique. The profession is filled with nurses like Lindsay—nurses who lost family to the pandemic and had no time to grieve; who continued pursuing their education through all of the upheavals; who coped with almost unbearable stress, and scrambled for data when the mRNA vaccines really did emerge at “warp speed” and forced us to rethink everything we thought we knew about vaccine development. But Lindsay’s exceptional poise and sense of responsibility during her frank “I trust the science” spotlight moment have made her representative of the skills, empathy, common sense, and honesty we associate with nursing.
A quiet icon of nurse leadership
While everyone yearned for certainty, Dr. Lindsay never claimed that science is a source of 100% correct, oracular knowledge; she merely said that this is the way that science works—and in effect acted as America’s test pilot for the vaccine.
As she sat down to receive her jab on December 14, 2020, what Lindsay displayed was a nurse’s dedication to evidence-based practice. When she backed this up by not collapsing on the spot or exploding in the weeks following her vaccination, she faded from national headlines and proceeded with her duties at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and worked toward yet another degree. But Lindsay’s persistent lack of rare side effects, her utter failure to cash in on her time in the spotlight, and apparent inability to catch even a mild case of breakthrough Covid made her a quiet icon of nurse leadership during the pandemic.
Millions of mistrustful, frightened people at all levels of society heard her speak with the sane, confident, honest voice of a nurse who has no agenda other than a desire to see her patients well and healthy. Amid rumor-driven panics, false claims based on specious data, and adult mobs throwing tantrums that would be the envy of any 3-year-old, Lindsay’s voice – imbued with a science-based assurance similar to Dr. Fauci’s but without any confrontational edge – resonated. Meanwhile, she has navigated her unasked-for celebrity and public honors with a cool-headed grace and continues to keep her head above water in an era when staffing shortages and burnout are the norm, women’s health care decisions are predicated not on science but on a peculiar blend of metaphysics and politics, and public health officials are driven from office… for doing their jobs.
How about featuring American Nurses on some postage stamps?
Today, after a year and a half of combining full-time work with study, waving from cars during ticker-tape parades, holding a little girl’s hand for her Covid jab, and adding tchotchkes to her diploma and awards wall, Dr. Lindsay is making space for the Presidential Medal of Freedom she received today from President Biden. (He obviously likes standing next to her and handing her things. This is their second rendezvous). As the White House defines the honor, the medal is bestowed on people who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States.
Lindsay has been a very atypical American celebrity, and there has not been a peep about reality TV deals, an as-told-to book, or even a barrage of media appearances. However, this writer still thinks she belongs on a stamp. While we still have a postal service, we deserve a “nurse” postage stamp of a more recent vintage than 1961—and in fact, it would not be amiss to issue a full series of stamps honoring American Nurses and Nursing.
If you call this woman Intrepid, you are merely being accurate.
When a retired WWII nurse saw her 100th birthday approaching, she decided to celebrate by engaging in a (terrifying) new learning experience while simultaneously helping people… Because that’s just how some nurses roll.
A couple of years ago, after a neighbor went skydiving, Nurse of the Week Raymonde Sullivan was intrigued. We do not know whether the British-born retiree recalled Parachute Nurse, a film released back when she was a WWII frontline nurse, but something made Sullivan decide to pick up the classic “bucket list” line item and take a literal leap into her next century. However it was, the Florida resident decided that a skydive was just the ticket: “I had never done it, and I’ve done a lot of things in 100 years so I thought I must do it while I can.”
There was more to it than that, of course. Sullivan tragically lost a daughter to motor neuron disease (the best-known form being Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which is also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”), so she worked with the Motor Neurone Disease Association of South Australia to make her birthday challenge into an opportunity to raise funds and awareness for research into a cure.
And what a challenge! Sullivan went through her lessons and on her birthday this May, she made the astonishing jump with her neighbor – in freefall at speeds up to 120 mph, while dropping at 200 feet per second. The game retiree seemed to agree that paratroopers earn every cent of their hazard pay. Describing the experience with British understatement as “scary,” she made it clear that she has no plans for a repeat performance (no doubt to the great relief of her family and friends).
Sullivan might have found the experience more frightening than she had anticipated. The tiny centenarian looked almost petrified as the time neared for her jump (a viewer might feel similarly; the adventure does indeed look “scary”). Having lived through the relentless bombings of the Battle of Britain, though, it was easy for the newbie para nurse to place her fears in context. When her turn came, the petite English nurse kept a stiff upper lip and did her late daughter proud.
After a sad and distressing holiday weekend, we can all do with something uplifting—or peacefully down-drifting. So, without further ado, here is a video showing a terrified-but-impossibly-brave woman who remains undaunted as an instructor tucks her under his arm like a plush toy and leaps out of a plane (note how happy fellow passengers are to see someone else go first):
Nurse of the Week Elizabeth Anh-Trinh Stulac, RN/BSN is an established nurse leader working toward a Ph.D., but she remembers where she came from. So, earlier this month she went back home to Elk River, Minnesota to share a message with graduating seniors at tiny Ivan Sand High School, the alternative learning center she graduated from herself in 2008.
“It is not a secret that when you go to an ALC school, sometimes people view you as being a bad kid, an outcast, or not smart enough to make it in a traditional high school. I am here to tell you: That is false.”
Stulac, who later graduated from college Summa Cum laude and in the top 15 percent of her class, is studying for a doctorate in transcultural nursing while working as a charge nurse in the Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 intensive care unit. Her older sister, now a nurse practitioner, was a high school dropout who eventually earned her GED. Thus, Elizabeth Anh-Trinh Stulac knows just how grave an error it can be to make assumptions about someone’s capabilities.
When the latest Ivan Sand grads gathered on June 7 for their graduation ceremony, she urged them to believe in themselves and get in touch with their own leadership skills.
First, the alumna told them, don’t buy into stereotypes of Alternative Learning Center students! “Here I was at the Mayo Clinic, the No. 1 ranked hospital in the world, and they were telling me the strengths that I brought to their organization.” The RN, who is also Mayo’s Rapid Response Team Nurse and chairs two committees (in her spare time), flatly informed the 2022 class: “It is not a secret that when you go to an ALC school, sometimes people view you as being a bad kid, an outcast, or not smart enough to make it in a traditional high school. I am here to tell you: That is false.”
The 2008 Ivan Sand grad can speak from experience: “Through the many leaders that I have worked with throughout the years, I have come to realize that one of the greatest predictors of success is your perception of yourself. I am here to tell you all today, as you graduate from Ivan Sand Community School that you are not an outcast, you are not a bad kid, and you are not the many things society has made you believe about yourself. But in fact, you are a class of potential leaders.”
After stressing the importance of assessing yourself on your own terms and not those imposed on you by others, the RN told the class of future leaders to write down their short-term and long-term goals,” and determine what they need to do to achieve them. Then, with a hat tip toward the Mayo onboarding process, Stulac added, “I would also recommend identifying your own personality type, and the strengths that each of you carries individually.”
And never assume defeat. Her sister, Stulac says, “is one of the smartest people I know.” ALC students learn early that “Life is messy.” After all, “Not all of you come from traditional families. Many of you are working to help support your families. Opportunities are not given equally to each person. But the feeling that you get when you achieve your goals, having overcome those barriers, is worth the hard work and worth the bad days — because you will have many bad days. Success does not come free; you must work hard for it.”
With her NP sister’s example in mind, as she concluded Stulac reminded them, “Your success is not only your own but the people who look up to you. I know that some of the greatest leaders are here among us tonight, and I am so excited for you and the impact that you will make on the world that we live in, and what you will achieve!”
A good message for all graduates to live by. Fort the full story on the graduation ceremony, see here.
Our Nurse of the Week column celebrates the New Jersey nurses who saved Trenton last month. (In the interest of full disclosure, the rescuee’s name is “Trent,” but he was named for Trenton, New Jersey, so these nurses absolutely “saved Trenton”).
The nursing profession has always attracted people who have an innate urge to help, and hardly a week passes without news about some nurse who stopped on a dime to aid people (or kittens) in almost every imaginable setting. So, when an off-duty nurse buying veggies sees someone collapse at their neighborhood grocery store or witnesses a devastating auto accident en route to work, we assume they will take charge, ensure that help is forthcoming, and attend to the most pressing needs of any injured or endangered party.
It is easy to take this for granted—to say, “oh, nurses are always doing that!” However, the fact that such events are so common attests to the extraordinariness of a profession where on the clock or off, going out of one’s way to save and help others is the norm—and while in most cases those “others” are human, nurses will on occasion branch out and save members of more advanced species such as felis catus.
The ED nurses at Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton New Jersey have no plans to enter the veterinary field, but their versatile skill set was put to good use on the last Sunday night in May. That evening, as incoming and outgoing staff converged during a shift change, casual exchanges of shop talk and gossip trailed off when a series of distressed feline mews and squeaks emerged from a sewer at the back of the nearby ambulance bay.
It was a Kitten Emergency! A small boy cat was in trouble mere yards from the ED, but could not escape the sewer to reach the waiting room. Apparently, the imperiled kitten had sufficient lives in his account or plenty of good karma to his credit — because his “Kitten Emergency!” call managed to penetrate a roomful of trauma nurses, EMTs, and other ED personnel.
Placing their own spin on the firefighter tradition of rescuing cats stranded in trees, 15 Capital staffers formed an ad hoc Kitten Emergency! Rescue Unit (KE!RU) to extract the poor boy from his noisome confinement.
Having prepared by scavenging rescue equipment such as blankets, cat food, and turkey leftovers from the previous shift, the KE!RU team worked for nearly 2 hours to open the sewer grate and coax the frightened, stinky little boy to emerge. When they had calmed the kitten enough to venture further, ED trauma nurse, educator, and experienced hospital squirrel rescuer Heather Hendrickson, BSN/RN swaddled him in a towel and placed him in the hands of her colleague, nurse practitioner Celeste Shamma, NP, BSN/RN.
As they comforted the shaken boy kitten and assisted him with his toilette, the KE!RU team named him “Trent” (in honor of Trenton, NJ, the city in which he experienced his dramatic rescue).
Trent has now settled in a pleasant, safe, loving, and not at all smelly home. His sewer adventure and rescue by the KE!RU was fortuitous not only for Trent but also for a staff RN who had been looking to adopt an animal. In a local interview, Hendrickson said that her fellow RN had recently “been scammed by a breeder when trying to get a kitten for her family, so it seemed like this was meant to be.”
And, just as firefighters seem to resume cat-in-tree rescue duty when a wildfire season ends, let’s hope that this outstanding hospital kitten rescue is a similar bellwether for nurses who have been fighting the pandemic.
So, when