The Meaningful Impact of the 24 Hour Nurse Line

Janet Greathouse, RN has been with Memorial Health System for 18 years. For 17 of those years, she has been a registered nurse, and her past seven with the system have involved working with our 24 Hour Nurse Line—a free service for individuals seeking healthcare advice. As a nurse with the Nurse Line, Janet’s responsibilities include offering healthcare advice to those calling the Nurse Line, as well as helping them determine the level of care they may need. It is through this part of the service that members of the Nurse Line often see the most impact—the guidelines they follow and the standard practices in place, along with nursing experience, can often result in lifesaving advice for patients.

According to Janet, life with the Nurse Line can be incredibly busy. “It can be a lot some days. To have upwards of 1,200 calls in a weekday isn’t unusual—between incoming and outgoing calls, those numbers really climb.”

One such encounter occurred recently for Janet, with a patient recounting his Nurse Line experience during a routine follow-up call with a different nurse on the team. This patient immediately brought up Janet and his recent interaction with her, stating, “She saved my life.” When asked about this patient encounter, Janet remembers that his symptoms were “textbook heart attack symptoms,” and that she “had no doubt that he was in the middle of a major cardiac event.”

This patient though had already sought care on two different occasions for similar symptoms, so he was hesitant to once again go see a provider. Janet was insistent though, “I triaged him and knew this was much more serious than he realized. I could tell just by talking to him that he was experiencing shortness of breath, and he described other typical heart attack symptoms such as chest and arm pain. His situation might not have been as dire the previous times he sought medical care, but this time was definitely different—he needed to seek help.”

In the end, Janet’s instincts and persistence saved this patient’s life, with him later recounting that because of her advice, he did go to the emergency department (ED) and was informed that he was having a major heart attack, one that ultimately resulted in needing three stents placed in his heart.

“Now,” Janet says, “he shares his experience with others and in a way, the 24 Hour Nurse Line continues to make an impact on the community through that patient.”

“It’s usually those that really need to go to the ED that are the ones that don’t think it’ll be them,”

recalls Janet. “I’m so grateful that this particular patient listened to my guidance and sought help—this is why I do what I do.”

This was not the only patient experience that has been shared with Janet. Recently, she was also reminded of an experience involving a concerned mother.

“This one,” Janets says, “this one is a story that really gets me. When I heard this story, it gave me cold chills from my neck to my toes.” The story in question being one recently shared with Janet after the patient on the other side of the phone recognized her voice. “I didn’t realize who it was at first,” Janet recalls, “but she recognized me immediately.” The caller was a mother of a young boy who received guidance from Janet the previous year.

“When I answered the phone, she told me, ‘Jan, I’m so glad I got ahold of you! I think of you every day— you’re the reason we got a diagnosis for my son.’”

The grateful mother then went on to explain to Janet that because of her insistence for the family to take the child to the emergency department, a leukemia diagnosis was uncovered.

“I remembered her situation,” Janet recalls. “The boy was only one or two years old, and he hadn’t been himself for days. His mother was worried because he had a lingering fever that was incredibly high—I think around 103-105 degrees—but she had taken him to an urgent care facility, and they said it just looked like he had a virus.”

The Nurse Line is fortunate enough to have many seasoned nurses, like Janet, on the team, so she knew that this wasn’t quite normal. “I insisted that she take him to the emergency department and request that they do a round of bloodwork on him.”

Labs aren’t always done on visits to the ED, especially on patients that young, but Janet knew that this needed to be completed. “I trusted my gut,” Janet states, “we have guidelines that we follow, but if I hadn’t been a nurse for so long, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have insisted on labs.”

The results from the bloodwork were concerning, so the child was then sent to a children’s hospital—it was there that a diagnosis of leukemia was confirmed.

“He’s now three years old and undergoing treatment,” Janets shares, “but I can’t help but think about how differently this could’ve turned out if they hadn’t had labs done—it could’ve been weeks or months until that cancer was found.”

The 24 Hour Nurse Line is an incredibly valuable resource within our community, one that has provided lifesaving services to many patients, and it’s all thanks to the dedication, knowledge, and instincts of those answering the calls on a daily basis.

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