Nurse recalls opening Cary Intensive Care Unit to better care for critically ill patients

Willard

Note: This is another in a series of historical reviews of Cary Memorial Hospital as Cary Medical Center celebrates its 100th anniversary.^he anniversary. This article tells the story of the development of the intensive care unit at Cary Memorial Hospital.

CARIBOU, Maine — Today’s modern intensive care units with advanced bedside technology are very different from those available to doctors and nurses at Cary Memorial Hospital until the mid-1960s. Linda Willard, who was a registered nurse at the time and worked at Cary Memorial Hospital from the fall of 1967 to 1977, envisioned the establishment of the first intensive care unit at Cary Memorial Hospital.

Willard attended Hahnemann Hospital School of Nursing in Worcester, Massachusetts, completing a 3-year training program. He came to Cary in 1967 and started working on the infirmary floor of the hospital. He explained that before the establishment of the intensive care unit, doctors relied on their stethoscopes and training to care for critically ill patients.

“It wasn’t until the hospital received a donation from Central Maine Power to purchase a monitor defibrillator that we were able to monitor and convert fatal arrhythmias in a patient with the same equipment,” he said. “At that time, nurses were not trained to defibrillate a patient, only doctors.”

The nurse recalled a young man who had a heart attack and did not survive because nurses were not authorized or trained to use the defibrillator. “I was so upset that I went to the director of nursing and told her about the incident, and when I returned to my station, Dr. Doug Collins had already signed me up for a seminar to learn about Cardiac Arrhythmias.”

The 6-week series would take him to Portland, where he would learn a lot about how to read a heart monitor and use a defibrillator. When she and the doctor returned to Cary, she began teaching other nurses how to use monitors to detect cardiac arrhythmias. Training and new equipment encouraged the hospital to open a small intensive care unit with two beds in a semi-private room.

“We needed to identify financing to purchase the materials we would need to open and expand the unit,” Willard said. “It took us approximately 18 months to expand to a four-bed unit that would meet our needs until we moved into the new hospital.”

The intensive care unit is a general unit that cares not only for heart patients but also for victims of trauma or complex surgeries that require special care. Pedro Simon, a vascular surgeon at the hospital, began performing complex vascular surgery and would admit his patients to the intensive care unit for close monitoring. was stated.

After the intensive care unit was established, Willard and her physiotherapist friend Mary Lou Brown traveled to Australia to work in that country’s healthcare system. They learned a lot from the experience, and he was able to share some unique knowledge and practices while working at a 700-bed hospital himself.

“I can teach them a lot about infection control and wearing gloves when dealing with rashes and the like,” Willard said. A medical student nurse took his advice and she and the student nurse were the only ones not infected during the tick outbreak. Willard also mentioned that central lines need to be cleaned and pipes replaced every day to protect against infection.

On the contrary, Australians taught him a lot about respiratory diseases and their treatment. He learned how to remove and put on respirators and how the staff would move the patient around the bed to increase stamina while the respirator was on.

The large hospital had three intensive care units. One for cardiac patients, one for the general unit and one for patients recovering from surgery.

“I learned a lot from this staff, and I think they learned a little bit from me and how we take care of patients at home,” Willard said. “It was a great experience for me and has helped me throughout my nursing career.”

When she returned to Cary, she served as an educator and supervisor for the nursing staff. Sending nurses away for training for a few weeks would be too expensive and would impact staffing, he said. Dr. Leland White and Dr. With the help of Douglas Collins, the hospital was able to establish a strong educational program.

“Both Dr. Collins and Dr. White were excellent teachers,” Willard said. “Our nurses were anxious to learn about new procedures and how they could benefit the patients in their care.”

The development of the intensive care unit led to the need for expanded space for physical and occupational therapy, as well as advanced x-ray and laboratory services.

“We have exceeded what we can do at Cary Memorial Hospital,” he said. “This was the driving force behind the development of the new Cary Medical Center on Van Buren Road. “This was a great advancement for the City of Caribou and the entire region.”

Willard, who left Cary before the new medical center opened in 1977, went on to become a family nurse practitioner. He worked in Rockland and Dover-Foxcroft and helped develop occupational medicine services. He is retired and currently lives in Bangor.