One day, Southern Adventist University students were working at a health fair booth at the Samaritan Center in Ooltewah, Tennessee, when they were able to help a local senior citizen gain a second chance at life.

Barbara Smith, a retired university employee, had stopped by the thrift store and social services center to shop but became lightheaded and weak. Senior nursing majors Yuna Kim and Somee An noticed that she seemed unsteady on her feet and rushed her to the booth to check her vital signs.

Frightened by her high blood pressure and alarmingly low pulse, they notified John Singletary, assistant professor of nursing, who urged that she be taken to the nearest emergency room.

The students waited with Smith until a transport to the emergency room was arranged. Doctors stabilized Smith and decided to keep her at the hospital overnight. The next day, after evaluating her heart, surgeons installed a pacemaker. Although feeble and tired, Smith was soon able to return home. She acknowledged that she may not be alive without the care from Southern’s nursing students.  

“Even though they may feel like they aren’t making much of an impact right now, they are,” says Sherry Poston-Smith, director of communications and volunteers at the Samaritan Center and Smith’s daughter-in-law. “After Mom returned home, I set up an app on her phone that connects to the doctor’s office, monitoring her condition, and we learned the pacemaker is being used 95% of the time. This confirms that the students gave her a second chance at life.”

Students in Southern’s School of Nursing are trained to observe and attend to the needs of their community and respond to emergencies during clinical rotations.

“To my knowledge, this is the first emergency in the community students have experienced,” Singletary states. “They needed to be autonomous and make correct clinical decisions to help Barbara get the right care immediately. They were excellent examples of what a trained nurse can do.”

The original article was published on the North American Division news site.